


This New Life

by SlyGrovyle



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Adoption, Battle, Blind Character, Brothers, Children, Coming of Age, Conflict, Corruption, Crimes & Criminals, Death, Deception, Embedded Images, Explicit Language, Family, Fantasy, Father Figures, Fire, Friendship, Gen, Genetic Disorders & Abnormalities, Genocide, Hope, Identity Issues, Insanity, Loss of Identity, Loss of Innocence, Mentors, Mystery, Near Death, Original Character(s), Original Universe, Physical Disability, Pokemon, Racism, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29193336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlyGrovyle/pseuds/SlyGrovyle
Summary: Following the destruction of their home and the gruesome death of their parents at the hands of a mysterious horror, Vagus the Totodile and his older brother, Mycaelis the Charmander, now find themselves alone, orphaned, and in a world they know nothing of. The two brothers must now confide in each other more than ever as they seek to find a purpose for their unnatural abilities in this new world...and evade the evil that claimed the lives of their parents.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Benevolence

**Author's Note:**

> This New Life is the sequel to [That Other Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29186190/chapters/71657670)
> 
> This New Life is a series of short stories that were originally posted on [Deviantart](https://www.deviantart.com/slydragoon16/gallery/53382839/this-new-life) between 2015 - 2020 to serve as a backstory for Vagus and his brother Mycaelis, two of the protagonists from the Web Comic [PMD: Tales of Elysium](https://ssp-comics.com/comics/toe/?chapter=1&page=1) , a comic inspired by Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. These stories have now been put into chapters and bound together within a single story.
> 
> This story is currently ongoing.
> 
> -  
> Check out our [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/TalesofElysium) for advance comic updates and bonus content. 
> 
> This story and its chapters were illustrated by [Haychel](https://www.deviantart.com/haychel)

This world was a big place. Bigger than anything that Vagus the Totodile had ever known in his life. The fields seemed to go on forever, and the sky was so plain and vast that Vagus feared he would fall into it if he gazed up at it for too long. Such was a phobia developed when one spent their lifetime under the thick canopy of a jungle.  
  
Vagus had never seen the sky so clearly and never knew it was so vast. Then there was the silence, the sort of silence one hears when out in the middle of nowhere with nothing around to create any noise. The jungle was always full of noises, those that were familiar and those that seemed strange. Silence rarely ever came, and whenever it did, it was during the horrifying nights like the one that had claimed the lives of his parents.  
  
Vagus looked around him while he and his brother, Mycaelis, walked the rolling plains. There was no road and the sheer emptiness around them made Vagus feel exposed and anxious. If he had proper claws, he would have dug himself a burrow and stayed there until nightfall. The darkness would conceal him quiet well, provided his Charmander brother with his flaming tail wasn’t lumbering around behind him. In the jungle there was a tree wherever he turned and a brush to hide in wherever he looked. There was also Mum and Dad watching out for him. But here…here there was nothing, not a tree or bush to hide behind.  
  
What was he thinking coming out here? He had no idea where he was going, what he was even doing, or what the hell was even out here. What if they ran into a stranger that met them harm, what if a bird looking for an easy afternoon meal swopped down from above, what if those creatures that killed his parents found them, or what if….  
  
The sky rumbled angrily and gave Vagus a real reason to fear it. What if it rained?  
  
He looked up and saw that the sky was beginning to turn an angry grey. Where the heck did that suddenly come from? On the horizon he began to see flashes of lightning streaking across the sky and felt his heart sink as the wind began to pick up.  
  
“Cunts fucked!” rumbled Mycaelis. The Charmander was obviously displeased by the thought of an oncoming rainstorm. It was one of the few moments today that he had spoken. Although Vagus was put off by the absence of ambient sounds around him, he did find a certain pleasure in Mycaelis’ new found silence.  
  
“Where did this suddenly roll in from?” Vagus sighed.  
  
It was a valid question. The storm had seemed to come out of nowhere. But then again, Vagus hadn’t a clue in the world how storms formed or how to tell if one was brewing or not. Vagus had always known and felt what rain was. In the middle of monsoonal downpours, his father routinely forced him to fix gaps in the thatched roof of their hovel whenever there was a leak. The bastard was so big he would have caved in the ceiling had he tried to do it himself.  
  
Vagus was more than aware that his Charmander brother wouldn’t last long in one, especially when one considered the complete absence of shelter around. He continued to plod forward, his eyes focused on the oncoming storm. He expected some form of snarky response from Mycaelis, a complaint, a snarl or a rhetoric question that pointed out the poor likeliness of actually finding shelter, instead he got nothing.  
  
Dusk had fallen by the time the clouds had moved across and unloaded their torrential downpour onto the two siblings. Vagus was soon regretting his previous reflections on how he knew what rain felt like. No longer sheltered by the jungle canopy, the ensuing downpour offered Vagus no quarter, barraging him both he and his sibling as they trudged through the mud and braved through the wind. He covered his mother’s journal as best he could with his arms, hoping to keep as much water off it has possible. He was glad that she had chosen to write in one that had a leather cover.  
  
He had never felt or seen a downpour like this in his life. It hadn’t even been a full day since he left the jungle, and already he was growing sick of this new world. How it had drawn him in with the tantalising beauty in its ocean of stars and sweeping lush plains, and then attempted to drown both him and Mycaelis in a torrential downpour.   
  
Despite his dreariness, hope did present itself before him. Vagus could make out the sight of trees up ahead. A forest, rather than a jungle, it was situated closely to a nearby lake. He hoped that the tree trunks were thick, maybe they would find one with a hollow in it and would be able to huddle down inside. He didn’t care if it was wishful thinking, he just wanted something that would get them out of this blasted storm.  
  
Vagus turned to Mycaelis and noticed that his brother was lagging behind. He was cringing, scowling and even stumbling at times. All attempts to communicate with him only resulted in an affirmative grunt as a response. Vagus knew that his brother was tough, far tougher than he would ever be, but still Vagus knew all too well that Mycaelis wouldn’t last much longer in this storm. He was already slowing down, and his skin was beginning to rash from its exposure to all the water.  
  
Eventually conceding the fact that he wouldn’t get any responses about his well-being out of Mycaelis, Vagus frequently made subtle attempts to check the flame on his tail.  
  
“Will ya stop lookin’ at it, for fucks sake?” Mycaelis suddenly snapped. He had clearly noticed Vagus’ concerned glances at his tail. “I’m f-fine. J-just keep b-bloody moving.”  
  
Mycaelis seemed embarrassed, completely shamed, by the fact that something as trivial as water was able to reduce him to the wreck that he was becoming. Vagus, nonetheless, did as he was told. He kept his eyes ahead, looking back only occasionally to check if Mycaelis had collapsed into an unconscious heap on the muddied ground. They pressed onwards, following the shore of the lake until they eventually reached the woods ahead of them.  
  
  
Vagus watched on helplessly as Mycaelis collapsed onto a tree for support. For a moment, Vagus thought that he was just bracing himself against the howling wind. That was until he watched Mycaelis collapsed in eerily similar fashion as his father had collapsed before him.  
  
Mycaelis seemed overtaken by fits, his body shook severely. The rash on his skin had become blisters, some of which he had picked at, resulting in them bleeding. To make matters worse, Vagus noticed the place to be woodland rather than a dense forest. The trees were sparse and widely separate from one another. He had hoped for a canopy, something like home to keep most of the rain off, but his hopes were dashed. As for that hollow in a tree trunk, there was no way he would be moving Mycaelis any further to try and find one that would comfortably fit him.   
  
Vagus had not come far enough to let Mycaelis die. It was only the previous night that his father, who always doubted him and scorned him, had left Mycaelis in Vagus’ care. He was not about to stuff it up only a single day in. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Mycaelis.  
  
Vagus scouted ahead a short distance and soon spotted a nearby tree. It only had a shallow hollow in it and was far from what he hoped for, but it would at least allow Mycaelis some refuge from the rain, provided he covered it in a few branches. He set down his mother’s journal, feeling as anxious as she did about leaving it unattended. He then made his way back to Mycaelis.  
  
“C’mon!” he snapped at his brother. Vagus could tell he was growing weaker.  
  
“L-leave me,” Mycaelis grumbled sombrely. His head drooped low. He seemed so driven to shame by his exposed weakness, that he couldn’t even look Vagus in the eye. “I don’t deserve to-”  
  
“The only thing you deserve at the moment is a kick up the bum for being a sook!” snapped Vagus. He suddenly found an ounce of his mother’s ferocity burning within his heart, or was it his brother’s? He had to get Mycaelis moving, no matter what. Get him to shelter. Mycaelis could mope all he wanted once he was there.  
  
As Vagus spoke, he found himself beginning to sound more and more like Mycaelis, or at least the Mycaelis he used to know. “Now come on, on your feet, Laconian! For fucks sake, imagine what Dad would say if he saw ya in a state like this?”  
  
He gripped Mycaelis by his under arms and pulled him to his feet. He took one of the Charmander’s arms over his shoulder and supported him as he walked. With the wind and rain lashing at his body, Vagus helped his mud covered brother to the tree he had found, and slid him into the shallow hollow. He then pulled down the thickest branches he could reach, which weren’t very thick, and tried his best to cover Mycaelis with them.  
  
His actions, although commendable, looked outright ridiculous and clumsy. The wind would take hold of a branch and send it flying into the woods. Occasionally Vagus was able to catch them, mostly they would fly off so far he dared not pursue them for fear of becoming lost and separated from Mycaelis.  
  
Mycaelis’ trembles continued to only grow worse.  
  
“Stay with me, Mycaelis,” Vagus pleaded, trying desperately to keep the branches from flying off.  
  
“Hey, over ‘dare!” a call came from behind him. “What are ye at over ‘dare?”  
  
Vagus quickly and suddenly turned, completely startled and terrified. He looked upon the surface of the lake. Not far from the shore, a head had popped up from underneath the surface of the lake’s unusually calm waters. A pair of brilliantly glowing bulbs hung from it, illuminating the dreary evening. It was a Lanturn. One with a smile so wide, and friendly, that it seemed oddly out of place considering the ferocity of the storm. The again, Vagus would imagine that a fish, living underwater its entire life, would place howling storms amongst the least of its concerns.  
  
Vagus said nothing. He didn’t know what to say. Mycaelis was the one that would always speak, not him. He simply stared, a look of utter completely hopelessness was all he could convey. That’s all he felt.  
  
The Lanturn’s eyes looked him over, they felt warm and welcoming. Maybe that was simply because the rain and wind felt so cold and hostile in contrast? The Lanturn then looked past Vagus and noticed Mycaelis poorly covered by branches and desperately shoved into a shallow hollow.  
  
“Well, I’ll be darned,” the smile seemingly faded from her expression. She then averted her gaze away from Vagus and called out. “Marvin! Over here, now, quick!”  
  
Vagus heard a rustle of bushes, followed by a rush of footsteps and the clanging of metal against wood. A Floatzel, with a bucket half full of Oran berries at his side, soon stood before Vagus. He was larger than Vagus and stood over him. He was a well-aged Floatzel with a seemingly noble appearance. He sported a body that seemed to have endured many storms such as this and eyes that once saw many adventures.  
  
“What’s all this?” he cast his eyes over Vagus, and then Mycaelis.  
  
Vagus’ heart was racing. He didn’t know who these people were. Were they one of those that hunted his parents that night? One of those who hid in the shadows and cackled as his father fell before them? Was he one of those that chased them both from their home?  
  
“They’re perishin, Marvin,” called out the Lanturn. “Git dem home, nigh! That Charmander don’t look like he’s ‘bout to last much longer.”  
  
“Damn, woman!” snarled the Floatzel. “How de feck am I supposed ter take a Charmander underwater?”  
  
“Use the land entrance, ya dammed fool!” she snapped back. “Have those berries yer been foraging driven yer bloody senile?”  
  
They were going to take him somewhere. Take Mycaelis somewhere. He didn’t know where they were going or what they meant by a “land entrance” and quite frankly, Vagus didn’t want to know. As far as he knew, nothing was going to lay a hand on him or Mycaelis. He promised his father that, he promised he’d keep him safe. He watched on as the Lanturn disappeared beneath the surface, leaving him alone with the Floatzel.  
  
“Right now, lad. Let’s be getting you and your pal oyt av 'ere.”  
  
He sidestepped Vagus and made an unfortunate attempt to try and pick up Mycaelis. Vagus bounded into action, snapping at the Floatzel’s arm with his jaws. He screamed and flailed back in pain.  
  
“What de feck?” he clenched his bitten arm. “Easy der, lad!”  
  
It was a Totodile’s bite, a very serious bite. Let’s not forget, Totodile’s are essentially huge jawed gobs with arms and legs attached to them. Marvin’s wound was highly evident, even as the rain washed away the blood. Still the elderly Floatzel stood calm, steadily holding the wound to stem the bleeding. He didn’t seem angry in the slightest. Any creature Vagus knew would have returned the bite in kind, and outright attacked him at this moment. Yet here he was, simply standing face to face with a foe he had just wounded.  
  
“Listen ‘ere, lil fella. I don't nu who yer are, or what you're doin' 'ere. But I do nu if yer don’t git yer pal sum place warm, ‘es as gud ‘a dead oyt ‘ere.”  
  
Marvin slowly moved closer, one small step at a time. Vagus, like a cornered animal slowly, and cautiously, retreated, snapping his jaws at Marvin in a vain attempt to keep him at bay. His calmness must be some sort of trick, something to get him to lower his guard. Vagus wasn’t about to fall for it.  
  
“Not gonna ‘arm yer, lad.”  
  
Vagus took another snap at his arm, but the Floatzel was quick this time. His arm shot away from Vagus’ attack and grabbed the Totodile. Vagus kicked and squirmed and tried his hardest to bite at something fleshy, but found that his jaws could snap at nothing but air.  
  
“Goodness! Settle down, yer upstart!”  
  
Vagus began to grow weaker. The past day had completely exhausted him. It had been a long journey, and he had not eaten or slept in so long. Marvin was still surprisingly strong for his age, his arms were shockingly powerful. Vagus had begun to wonder just how weak he had become, or if Marvin really was that strong, after all.  
  
  
After a while of struggling in the Floatzel’s grip, Vagus’ body eventually grew tired, his muscles burning, and fell limp after some more gentle coercion from Marvin. The Floatzel never once struck him or a lay a violent hand on him. He simply held Vagus, letting him wear himself out. “That’s a good lil fella. Easy.”  
  
To Vagus’ surprise, he let him go and went to gather the unconscious Mycaelis in his arms. He turned to Vagus. “Come wi’ me, lad. Come!”  
  
Vagus gathered his mother’s journal from the muddy ground and proceeded to follow the Floatzel that now had his brother. He eyed the tip of Mycaelis’ tail that hug limp from Marvin’s arms. To Vagus’ horror, he noticed that the flame at the end was blazing no brighter than a candle.


	2. Innocence

_Silence filled the empty home long after the intruders had gone. The window shutters flung open, the door caved in. The table and plates were shattered, the armchairs destroyed, blooming flowers of cotton from their ruptured fabric. From the door and past the living room, the floor was slick with fresh blood.  
  
Every so often, this horrid vision would play out before Marvin. _

_Crying, someone he once loved was struck down and slammed. The children watched on in horror, frozen in place as their young eyes watch on. What else were children to do when their mother couldn't scream for them to run? Her mouth was held shut by a hand made from steel, her teary eyes trying to speak for her. Before their voice could be heard, the floor was already awash with blood. The terrified children stood paralyzed in place, not knowing what to do. Fate decided for them and sent a pair of blades to slit their throats. One and one, and then they stood no more._

_She watched on as they fell, laughter came from all around. The iron hand around her mouth grew tighter as her assailant grew more wretched. She was up against the wall now, the force of a strong pair of hands forcing her against it. She knew what was to come next. She didn’t care. Nothing was worth living for now.  
  
When he was done with her, he cast her to the next. Then another, then another, another, and another. Before she could be thrown to the next, she allowed herself to have the last laugh. Casting herself upon the blade of a Scyther, she allowed herself one last look at her fallen children and went to join them in paradise. It wasn’t as painful as she would have thought when the blade entered her abdomen and exited her back. She could hear the intruders moans of despair when their plaything escaped. _

Panting and covered in sweat, Marvin shot up from his bed made from reeds. He gasped and fell back down on his back, relieved that it was over. The visions he had experienced countless times, yet it still managed to hit him like a ton of bricks. He cringed, feeling a jolt of pain rush up from his wounded arm, which he now had in a splint. He turned his head and looked over at the little critter that had caused the ghastly wound.

The Totodile was asleep along with the Charmander, snoozing away on a bed of reeds by the fireplace. The Totodile had collapsed instantly on the makeshift bed the moment Marvin had presented him before it. Lying by the warmth of the fireplace and comforted by their own bed of reeds, the two young ones seemed completely at peace. Marvin couldn’t get a word out of either of them before they fell asleep.  
  
  
Rising from his bed and clutching his wounded arm, Marvin could only look upon them with a puzzled expression. These two children, whoever they were, evoked a feeling that simply refused to sit well with him. The well-aged Floatzel had come across many oddities in his long and adventurous life. He had ventured into chasms deep and caves eternal, he had reached the summits of the tallest mountains and braved the fiercest storms, but few things had ever unsettled Marvin this deeply.

The look that Totodile gave him when it snapped at his arm, it seemed almost feral, like it had no understanding of the world. His emerald green eyes seemed awash with confusion, yet he tried desperately to conceal them behind the snapping of a lethal pair of jaws. Marvin had many questions; ones that he hoped would be answered when the two boys awoke.  
  
Still fatigued from lack of sleep, Marvin waddled over to a nearby pool of water that was at the end of this underground cave he called a home. Marvin’s home was an interesting one, to be sure. A small underground cavern, situated near the bottom of the lake he had found the two children near. At one end of the cavern there was a deep pool of water which was actually part of a flooded cave system that lead out to the depths of the lake itself. His dear and long-time friend, Narda the Lanturn, was able to swim in freely in from the lake and poke her head up from the pool to say hello, or more likely drive Marvin up the wall with her endless banter.

On the other end of the cavern, a rocky set of stone steps lead up to a tunnel. One could use it to climb up to the surface on the land and find themselves close to the shore of the lake. It was rarely ever used. Narda had no use for it, Marvin had little use for it, and it was rare indeed that guests ever came calling.

But the cavern’s most astonishing feature, the feature that Marvin had come to admire and made him take it as his home, were the collations of glowing crystals that were embedded in the rock walls and ceiling of the cavern. Each one shone with the light of a star in the night sky and illuminated the cavern with a glowing splendour of colour.

The thought of even trying to extract one of them to be sold revolted Marvin. He always saw their beauty as being beyond currency. He also enjoyed not having to use flaming torches that would have smoked up the cavern and constantly need replacing and relighting. The smoke from the fireplace, however, always seemed to find ventilation to the surface. Marvin had never explored why that was, his exploration days were long gone. Now, he had but to sit and enjoy the remainder of his life.

Holding his injured arm above the water, Marvin slipped into the pool. The cold early-morning water of the lake bit at him, almost as hard as a certain Totodile. That was only for a split moment, and soon Marvin sighed in relief, feeling the cold water rejuvenate his aging body after a rough night’s sleep.  
  
At that moment, a glowing yellow light began to appear beneath the surface of the pool. It continued to grow progressively brighter until the head of a Lanturn broke the surface of the pool’s waters just before Marvin. He back up a little, bringing his arms up around the edge of the pool to support him from sliding in.  
  
“Morning to ya, Marvin.” Narda chimed, her ever-present smile making his heart warm against the chill of the water. “How’s ya arm doin’?”  
  
The question seemed to irritate him. The pain in his arm reminded him of a time when he was in his prime, young and fit, and wounds like this would be almost healed by the following morning. Now he would be stumbling around like an old fool for a week. “Feck, woman!” he snapped. “It hurts like a son of a-”

“Oh, stop yer complanin’, yer big sook, you!” Narda never did like to hear the complaints of an old fellow. She was younger than him by at least five summers, or was it ten? He couldn’t seem to recall nowadays. But Marvin did know for a fact that he had been old enough to remember when she first hatched.  
  
“Fecks sake, woman!” snapped Marvin. “That Totodile’s a freak, I tell ya. Freak! Ti’ took every ounce of strength in me just to calm him down.”

“Shh! You’ll wake them, ya dammed fool,” Narda hissed.

Both friends looked upon the children in silence.  
  
Narda adjusted her head and used her bulbs to illuminate them better. “They still sleeping, eh’ she observed, “Look at the state of them, Marvin, they must have been traveling far. Tis no wonder why they were perishin’”

“Aye,” Marvin agreed, scratching the back of his head. He continued to observe the children while they slept. They looked so peaceful now, finally at rest. Like any other innocent child.

“How fare’s the Charmander?” Narda asked.

“Lashings better than what he wus doin' oyt dare in dat storm.” He turned to Narda, an anxious look in his eyes. ‘Narda, I tink dare is somethin' wrong wi' dees laddies.’

“How’d ya figure that?”  
  
“What wud two laddies be doin' wanderin' raun in a storm loike dat? No parents, no family. Den they clobber me, de first person they meet.” He lifted his wounded arm before Narda.

Narda seemed just as perplexed as he was, something that she rarely ever was. “I have no idea. Where yer suppose they come from? 'Av yer seen dem raun town?”

“Naw. I ever seen their sort raun anywhere. They’re wearin' armbands de likes av which I 'av never seen.”  
  
Narda nudged forward in her pool, squinting her eyes to get a better look at the Totodile’s band. Her eyes seemed to suddenly widen after a moment. Something must have clicked in that inspiring mind of hers. “Marivin, how far be Prismatic Jungle from ‘ere?”  
  
Marvin took a moment to think. He had occasionally frequented the outskirts of the jungle, and even ventured in slightly. He had never gone in too deep, though. Prismatic Jungle had always had an ominous reputation about it; there were always outlaws, and the mentally deranged that hid within. But in the past decade or so, the jungle had become a place of sheer terror. Nowadays, no one who went in too deep ever came back out, and the ones that did, emerged half mad with fear, screaming stories of monsters in the shadows that tore apart entire exploration teams.

Most of the losses came from his former guild, The Prospectors Guild. It was the only local guild left in these parts of Oat and the old guild master, Carlos the Cinccino, was becoming desperate for some finds in that area. Marvin had always opposed his guild master in every decision that regarded that accursed jungle. As nasty as the thought was, Marvin hoped that Carlos’ age would eventually take him, and that the guild would come under new administration, one that would put its teams to better use and value their lives better.

“It’s ‘bout a full day’s walk, if yer fit enough,’ Marvin finally said to her, answering her question. “’Ave yer ‘eard somethin’?”  
  
Narda took a moment to ponder upon Marvin’s response. Narda may have only ever been confined to the waters of Oat lake where she had lived her entire life, but that had never stopped her from being the sociable kind. Marvin often wondered if Narda knew everyone there was to know. She was always off talking to couples that strolled by the lake, or convening with her circle of underwater friends to gossip and spread rumour, true or false.

Marvin never looked kindly on the notion of gossip and rumour spreading. But not even he could deny that Narda was a swimming encyclopaedia of knowledge when it came to knowing everything about anyone. The thing he had always found most bewildering was the fact that she was always right about what she knew.

“There’s rumours,” she began, “stories about folk living within the jungle. That there is a group, a small one, which wear strange armbands. Stories say that they are death incarnate, that they have carved out their own territory in the jungle and have slaughtered hundreds who have dared to intrude upon them.”

“Hundreds?” Marvin almost recoiled in shock. Could this have been where the lost teams had vanished to? He had met several of the survivors, not that there were that many to begin with, and he had always heard their maddened rambling of shadows and blaring red eyes. Most of the poor sods never did recover.

Marvin then turned to the two seemingly innocent children that slept on his forfeited bed by the fireplace. Neither of them looked like they could have come from the shadows that terrorised so many, and neither did they have the blaring red eyes that struck fear into the hearts of so many.

For once in his life, Marvin really hoped that Narda was wrong and that these rumours were simply what they were; rumours. Despite his doubts, a fear began to trickle into the back of his mind and he began to wonder what sort of terror he had just brought into his home. To his surprise, the visions of his nightmares came to mind. The last time he had brought terror to a place he once called home, it had cost him everything he held dear in this world.


	3. Providence

Marvin sighed and idly wandered up the stone steps to the cavern’s land entrance. He made it to the tunnel that led to the surface and grumbled in annoyance when his feet sank into the familiar feeling of mud and water. The storm was still raging and its downpour was flooding the tunnel. It never did have any proper drainage for all the water. Nearing the entrance, Marvin gazed up at the sky and noted that the downpour wouldn’t be ending any time soon. He clenched his injured arm and barred himself against the bite of the howling wind.

“Sssay,” came a voice that managed to hold itself above the howl of the storm. The head of an Arbok slid closely into view. It eyed Marvin with a pair of sinister yellow eyes and Marvin eyed it back not in the least startled by it. “Sspare me a refuge in your den, old Marvin? A cursed tree all but crushed mine.”

“Crushed yers?” scoffed Marvin. “Yer spake as though yer had wan ter begin with, Thrax.”

Thrax was known all too well in the area. Ever since his younger years, Marvin had recalled Thrax being nothing but a nuisance. He could recall several dozen occasions where teams from the guild had been called to go after him, and it didn’t seem how much time he spent in lock up, the years never served to tame his wretched behaviour. A vagrant with malice intent. A reputation that was well earned after numerous rumours told by mothers who found their children and young missing from their cribs, whenever they accommodated him.

Marvin was never one to hold true to rumours and fear mongering. Usually on days like this, he would take pity and accommodate the Arbok until the storm’s passing, but today was different. With two young children asleep and under his care, Marivin wasn’t about to permit a potential predator into his den.

Marvin stood his ground and spoke firmly, maybe a bit too harshly. Maybe it was the pain in his arm, or the grey sky, or the fact that he was an old bugger that could do nothing but sit on his arse and wait for death to take him in his sleep. “Not today, Thrax. Go bug someone else.”

Thrax recoiled at the response and hissed at Marvin viciously. Thrax was a bulky Arbok, long and powerfully built, there was no question that he could have swept past the injured Marvin with ease, but Marvin knew him better than that. Despite his size and strength, Thrax was one of the more cowardly folk that Marvin had met in his life, one that tried to hide his lack of nerve behind a sharp set of fangs and a chorus of hisses. And that’s all Marvin ever saw him as, fangs and hisses.

Thrax eyed Marvin over once more before turning to leave, he noticed Marvin’s injured arm. “Get well soon, Marvin. Injured folk your age tend not to last for much longer.”

Marvin’s eyes followed him as he slithered off into the storm. “Fool,” muttered Marvin under his own breath before heading back down into the cavern.

He sloshed his way through the flooded tunnel and made his way down the stone steps down into the cavern. He took note of the Charmander and Totodile still asleep near the fireplace. He wondered when they would awaken, it would be nice to have someone to talk to now that Narda had gone out for the evening, the social butterfree that she was.

It was then that Marvin sat down at the table, an old and makeshift thing that sat in the centre of the cavern. It was there that he placed something that he hoped would shed some light on the two boys. A journal, one bearing the same emblem as the two boy’s armbands. It remained undamaged by the rain, but to Marvin’s horror seemed to be stained with blood that oddly enough didn’t wash off in the rain.

Marvin opened the journal and cast his eyes on its text which made his head swirl with confusion. Marvin couldn’t read a word of it. Written in odd runes, it was. Yet they all looked familiar, like he had seen them before. Somewhere, deep within a cave, or was it a mountain pass…Marvin could not recall. He flicked through the pages, some of which contained beautifully drawn sketches. One that caught his interest was found towards the start of the journal, only a few pages in.

She was the most beautiful Charizard Marvin had ever laid his eyes on, her beauty only matched by the fierceness that the sketch managed to catch in her eyes. Did this journal perhaps belong to her? And were these children perhaps hers? Marvin shuddered to think of what may have happened to her if the boys truly did come from Prismatic Jungle. So engrossed was Marvin in this journal, that he failed to notice the splashing of water from the top of the stone steps, or the silent slither of purple scales across the stone floor.

He had no idea what Thrax was planning or what he really intended when his tail struck Marin and sent him flying into the wall of the cavern. The table was knocked aside and the journal with it. Marvin cried out in shock and cringed when his head struck solid rock.

Decades of combat experience kicked in, but they all meant precious little in a body aged and ravaged by time. Marvin felt muscles once stronger than iron falter, he felt bones that could once handle anything crack, he felt what was once a sharp mind spin in confusion as he struggled to come to terms with his attacker. He struggled to his feet, faltering at least twice before being able to steady himself against the cavern wall. He stared down Thrax and snarled at him. He was old, but he wasn’t about to let this lowlife finish him here.

Thrax came at him, jaws gaping wide, ready to clamp down on the seemingly defenceless old Floatzel. With his good arm, Marvin lifted the table’s chair and wedged it between Thrax’s jaws, keeping them pried open. The Arbok hissed and seethed with anger at Marvin, his yellow eyes fill with desperation and hate. He forced Marvin up against the wall, the chair being the only thing separating Marvin from the venom soaked fangs of the Arbok’s gob.

“Narda…” wheezed Marvin, trying to call for his friend. He could barely speak, Thrax had forced the wind from his lungs. He summoned what little strength he had and shot a Water Gun into Thrax’s belly. The sudden blast of water sent the Arbok recoiling back onto the floor where he landed with a slap. Thrax continued to violently thrash his head about until the chair came loose from his mouth, sending it flying against the wall where it exploded into pieces.

Marvin seethed with anger. _Dat wus Her favourite chair, yer blasted kont!_

He was old, weak, and careless. How could he allow himself to turn his back on this thug? Thrax came at him again, jaws snapping wildly. Marvin ducked rolled and moved as quickly as his aged and damaged body could carry him, which was surprisingly fast enough, Thrax’s size did little to make him nimble.

Marvin knew that if he could keep this up, he could – SMACK – Thrax’s tail soon came to bare and sent Marvin skidding across the cavern floor until he neared the pool. Marvin felt the jagged rocks of the pool side tear at his flesh, gashing him across his forehead. His arm was screaming with pain, come to think of it most of his body seemed to have join the choir of screams from the rest of his body.

Anger was no longer enough to fuel his diminishing supplies of strength. He began to rise, but was swiftly smacked back down by the very tail that had sent him skidding across his home, the home he was trying to protect. He simply panted and gasped for air. He had failed, yet again. Save now he would endure the fate he deserved, where he should have died along those he once held dear.  
  
_Miles,…Caleb…I’m sorry. Daddy’s coming…_

He managed to roll onto his back and gazed up at the cavern ceiling, just before his vision was mired by a pair of menacing yellow eyes that bared down on him. A set of fangs slowly followed, coated in dripping streams of venom. Marvin was about to clamp his eyes shut, but thankfully was able to refrain from doing so for a moment longer.

Fire flashed before his eyes, so fast was it that he barely noticed a young Charmander engulfed in flame, charging into Thrax’s side. The hiss that followed was so high pitched that it nearly resembled a scream. So off guard was Thrax taken that he was thrown to the ground in a near instant.

Marvin soon felt a pair of hands under his arms and soon the floor was sliding underneath him as he was dragged further away from his attacker. The Totodile was soon at his side, looking down at him. The menace and confusion that was mired his eyes before was gone, they now seemed as calm as pools of still water. “Keep back,” he whispered to him, before charging in after the Charmander.

Thrax swiped his tail around in an attempt to sweep the Charmander aside, but the nimble boy simply jumped it like it were no more than a skipping rope. He vaulted himself at Thrax’s head, his hands finding purchase around the Arbok’s neck. A burst of flame came from the Charmander’s mouth, searing Thrax’s head in a blaze of fire. The Arbok screamed as the smell of burnt flesh filled the cavern. He fell back once more and flailed about on the ground. Still the Charmander clung on. Marvin’s relief soon turned to horror. The Charmander’s face was writhe with uncontained fury the likes of which he had seen in only the most heinous of madmen.

The Totodile soon joined and with his own strength pinned the huge Arbok down, his arms seemed like iron restraints keeping Thrax from rising once more. Marvin simply gaped at the sight. Two youngsters not even past their first state of evolution were overpowering the largest Arbok he had ever seen in his long-lived life.  
  


Thrax was panicking, desperation fuelled his efforts. He was snapping up at the Charmander with his vicious fangs but like lightning the Charmander simply swung left and right to avoid the snaps of the lethal fangs. He moved so fast Marvin’s eyes could barely keep in pace with him, but he was sure to keep pace of what followed next. With just as much speed, the Charmander’s arms soon found purchase around the top and bottom of Thrax’s jaws, forcing them open. Thrax forced his jaws to close as hard as he could, but try as he may, he could not close them, the Charmander had more strength in his arms than the Arbok had in most of his damn body.

With a roar, the Charmander began to force the jaws open, wider and wider until they could go no further, but to Marvin’s horror, the boy made them go further. Marvin’s gut wrenched as he heard Thrax’s screams begin to fade out to the sound of bones crackling, crackling that soon became snapping, and snapping that soon gave way to the unmistakable gurgling of blood in the back of one’s throat. Thrax tried to wriggle free, but try as he may the Totodile was there to hold him still and bite large chunks out of whatever part of Thrax’s body moved too much, severing muscles and tendons.

Marvin simply watched on, his eyes wide with shock and horror and what the two boys, who just hours ago were weakened and battered by the storm, were capable of. With the Arbok’s jaws taken care of, the Charmander set his attention back on its throat and, with the help the Totodile, began to strangle what life remained out of Thrax. The Arbok’s tail still thrashed slightly and continued to whisk about, hoping in vain to strike at something, then it fell still forever.

Panting, both the Charmander and the Totodile rose from their kill, their eyes turned to Marvin. Gone was the anger and hatred from the Charmander’s eyes, replaced now by a smug sense of satisfaction.

“Righto then, Mr. Know-It-All,” he addressed the Totodile with a pair of crossed arms. He then turned his attention to Marvin. “Who the fuck might this old bugger be?”


	4. Abhorrence

_There was once a time when Marvin was young, yes, indeed there was such a time. It was when he was but a child who, like all children, feared tales of monsters conjured up by their young imaginations or their parent’s machinations. Those nasty creatures - the ones that hid under beds, in closets, in basements, in all the places that were dark and scary or where grownups said not to go. But for Marvin, he learned quicker than most of his long gone childhood friends were monsters truly dwelt._   
  
_He was paddling down a river one summer’s morning, a brisk swim around Oat Lake. It was the sort of morning that made one glad to be alive, but for a child such as himself, it was just another splendid, carefree day, where the world seemed so much brighter and where his worst problems stemmed from his brothers eating all the sitrus berries for breakfast._   
  
_It was drifting down this lake that Marvin saw him, a lone Absol._   
  
_Marvin had never seen one before in person. Some were reclusive creatures, living in the wilds and making precious little contact with villagers and other locals. Something seemed off about them, a weirdness the likes of which couldn’t be explained, and like all things that can’t be understood they were shunned, cursed and feared._

_Marvin could tell the Absol was male, he was fairly certain it was. He seemed broad enough. He was sitting on his hind legs, the reeds around the river had been pressed down from him sitting there for so long. His head solemnly drooped down and gazed into the waters of the river. Marvin couldn’t see his face. He was still, so unnaturally still. Even from a distance, nothing about him seemed natural, and that’s exactly what made Marvin all the more curious._  
  
 _He had always loved things that others disliked. He was always one to explore the caves that kids were told not to wonder into, or talk to Pokémon that his parents would refer to as strange. Abnormals, the town folk would refer to them as, a breed of Pokémon that were marked by their pairs of ghostly blue eyes and powers that inspired thoughts of the supernatural. But Marvin never saw strangeness in anything, only mystery that drove his curiosity._  
  
 _It was that curiosity that drove him to pull himself onto the shore of the river and plod through the reeds towards the Absol. He seemed young, about Marvin’s age, a youth. Eventually Marvin got close enough, expecting the Absol to react to his presence. He got nothing. Whatever he was staring at, it must have been consuming all of his attention. Marvin wondered what would happen if he spoke to him._  
  
 _“Uh, hey? Hello?”_  
  
 _The Absol remained unmoved, rooted on the spot, continuing to explore whatever it was in the river that consumed its attention. Marvin crept closer and closer, the thought of the strange Absol rearing on him and attacking him never once entered his mind. Things like that never did and whenever they did, he always had an uncanny ability of shaving them into the back of his mind._  
  
 _He was close now. Almost close enough to touch his white bristly fur. “What yer looking at?” asked Marvin, hoping to get some sort of response or strike up some form of greeting._  
  
 _Again, much to his dismay, he got no response and began to wonder if-_  
  
 _“A monster,” the reply from the Absol came. It was sudden, quick, and abrupt. It left Marvin wondering if it was even spoken at all. “An…abhorrence…,” the Absol then added._  
  
 _A monster? What kind of vicious monster could possibly be hiding in the river’s pristine clear waters on a pleasant morning such as this?Marvin soon came to the Absol’s side and gazed down into the river. There, he saw something that made his heart stop. The Absol’s reflection was gazing back at him, his pair of ghostly blue eyes chilled Marvin to his core. _  
__  
“Randhir…” the Absol’s name rolled off Marvin’s tongue in a whisper as Thrax’s corpse was dissolved in the flames of a makeshift pyre by the lake. His gaze then shifted to both Vagus and Mycaelis, “Are dey truly as lost as ye were?”

The stars had gathered in their thousands that night, a sign that the storm clouds had finally cleared. Marvin watched on as the Arbok that nearly ended him perished in the flames. There was only silence that night, from both Marvin and the two boys he had found.

He wanted to scream at the Charmander in particular, tell him that Thrax didn’t need to die, that killing in any form was wrong, but Marvin knew there was something more in both these boys than a simple lack of morals. Someone had raised them with morals of their own, taught them to tear things apart first and think about their actions later. His thoughts then turned to the sketch Charizard in the journal he had found. Was she responsible? Who would raise a child like this? If the boys truly did come from the madness of Prismatic Jungle, then he would have understood her reasons. A sudden pang of regret came over him, she would have been a far better parent than he ever was; at least she made sure her sons would stay alive.

He turned to Mycaelis, the air of smug satisfaction about him had since faded. Marvin then uttered his first question, one of many that were pressing to leave his mind. “So what were ye and yer friend doing oyt in dat storm, eh?”  
  
“Friend?” Mycaelis grumbled. “He’s my brother.”  
  
Marvin scratched the back of his head, seeing little resemblance in the two supposed siblings. “Yer pa was a Feraligatr?”  
  
Vagus however was as sharp as ever. Brimming with questions, his head swept around. “How do you know that the Feraligatr wasn’t our mother?”  
  
Marvin gulped nervously. “I erm…looked through that journal yer brought ‘ere. Yer mother was a lovely drawer.”  
  
Vagus was quick to shoot him a dirty look that, for the most part, Marvin felt he deserved. “And you just thought you’d help yourself to someone else’s journal, did ya?”  
  
“Fuck’s sake, Vagus,” Mycaelis snarled and kicked a loose stone into the nearby lake. “She’s dead. What does it matter now?”  
  
“She’s not dead, she’s alive. She’s out there. I never saw her body, did you?”  
  
“She’s fuckin’ dead, you naive prick! They probably dragged her off to be eaten!”  
  
“No! W-why would you…?”  
  
“They tore her wings apart…easier to get the tendons….”  
  
“Stop…” Vagus was covering his head with his hands, anguishing and refusing to listen to more.  
  
“Then they gutted her and cooked her from the inside…”  
  
“Please…enough…”  
  
“That’s if they cooked her at all, probably just ate her alive. Tore her apart…limb from limb.”  
  
“Shut up!” Vagus took Mycaelis completely off guard; he tackled his brother to the ground and launched a volley of fists into his head.  
  
Mycaelis took some time but was quick to overcome his shock. He rammed his head into Vagus’ and threw a punch so hard into the Totodile’s abdomen that it sent him flying several feet into the air where he landed in the sand by the shore of the lake.

A sibling punch-up was something Marvin had known all too well in his life, he fought with his own from dawn till dusk only to watch his own sons do the same many years on. The only difference here was that these two looked like they were almost dead set on murdering each other.

Mycaelis then charged at the downed Totodile and before Marvin could get between the two feuding siblings, an arc of electricity shot from the lake and hit Mycaelis dead in the chest, flinging him backwards and leaving him stunned on the ground. Narda’s head had emerged from the water of the lake and bathed the shore with light from her bulbs as the fire from Thrax’s pyre began to fade.

Narda was never one to look angrily on others, but her eyes were menacing enough to embed terror in anyone. “Well, this is hardly the family reunion I was expecting from two siblings!”  
  
Vagus stumbled and fell before managing to get to his feet, gasping for air. Mycaelis had knocked the wind clean out of him in a single punch. Marvin was soon at his side. “Anything broken, Vagus?”  
  
“I’m fine,” he grunted, soldiering on as he always did when Mycaelis or Gaius knocked him around. Vagus got to his feet and stared down Mycaelis who had managed to clamber to his knees. “What’s your problem?” snarled Vagus, “I drag your ungrateful arse through that storm and that’s what I get?” 

“I never asked you to!” roared Mycaelis, fury in his eyes. “I told you to fucking leave me, you blasted cunt!”

“Dad said that I was…”

“Fuck what he said! He’s dead, too! Both of ‘em. Fucking wasted!” Mycaelis punched the rain muddied ground, his fists driven by pure anger and frustration. “And yet here we both are still breathing because there was nothing we could do! Maybe you feel fucking terrific with that, but I don’t!”  
  
“Enough!” roared Marvin above Mycaelis’ screams. His voice boomed as though he were reprimanding his team back in his guild days. Silence fell. Naught could be heard save for Mycaelis' ragged breaths as he recovered from his outburst.  
  
“Now,” chimed Narda, the anger in her eyes draining disturbingly fast, “I think it be time dat we got to know ye two a lil' bit better, now that yer wide awake and 'ave de energy to kill just about anything dat moves.”  
  
“I suppose we owe you two that much for getting us out of that storm,” Vagus sighed. He proceeded to head back inside the cavern when Marvin ushered him and pacified Mycaelis forward. “Sorry about your arm by the way,” Vagus mumbled remorsefully seeing that Marvin’s arm was heavily bandaged. 

The three sat down at the table which had survived its clash with Thrax. There were just enough chairs left for the three of them, Marvin’s heart still ached over the loss of the fourth. As soon as Narda’s head looming out of her pool nearby, the tale began.  
  
If Marvin wasn’t terrified before of the two boys, he certainly was by the time Vagus had concluded their story. He wasn’t sure what to fear more, the monsters that dwelt in the shadows of the jungle or the Feraligatr named Gaius that was their father, a creature so large and feared that it put most of the stories he had heard previously to shame. And within that moment, Marvin suddenly realised that the stories he had heard of the jungle were true, the freaks who wore armbands, the grim fates of dozens upon dozens of prospecting teams from the guild, the monster that may have taken them had sired two sons who had now arrived at Marvin’s doorstep. 

Their story continued, Vagus certainly had a knack for recounting past events while Mycaelis simply sat silently. The Charmander uttered not a word while his brother spoke, simply gazing into space with a pair of empty, emotionless eyes. He seemed a near polar opposite of his Totodile brother, like he was a vessel filled to its brim with hatred and violence by some creature of ill-repute. Laconians, they were called, a breed of Pokémon unlike any other, one taught to defend a land far from the shores of Oat, a land that neither of the boys had ever seen or walked upon.  
  
“Elysium?” Marvin let the name roll from his tongue, his eyes wide with intrigue.  
  
The more he heard Vagus speak about it, the more he felt as though he were a child again, feeling the fire and desire for adventure burn within him again, to visit a place of myth and legend, a place where most would say never existed to begin with. He wanted to plant his feet in the sands of its shores, pace his way through its green pastures and press forward under the warm canopies of its jungles which surely must be much friendlier than the ones of Oat. To Vagus, Elysium was but a tale told by his mother, nothing more. To Marvin, it was a place worth searching for, a place that may have sounded too ideal to exist, but he nonetheless wanted to see it for himself.

But while Marvin’s yearning heart soared at Vagus’ tale, his aged and experienced mind was drawing conclusions left right and center, each one leading to the same ultimate point, their mother was full of shit. Laconians, paradises, creatures that hid in shadows; the only Pokémon Marvin had heard tales like that from were the ones who had lost their minds looking for them. They were gripped by denial leading to self-delusion which in turn lead to downright madness. But yet Marvin truly wondered what it was that would make their mother tell such stories to her children. He had traveled as far west as the snow covered mountains and as far east as the shores of Mantine Beach. He had come across oddities of all sorts, the most fascinating of which first presented itself to Marvin in the form of an Absol with ghostly blue eyes.

“Tell me, Vagus,” Marvin spoke after Vagus had finished his tale, “have yer ever heard of Abnormals?”  
  
“Abnormals?” Vagus cocked his head, “That’s a name for something around here?”  
  
Marvin sighed. As much as he despised the name, it is one that nonetheless stuck. “There were once was a time long ago where they were called a different name,” he explained to Vagus, “one long since lost in time; stamped oyt by de ignorance o' Oat’s __newer__ inhabitants.”

Vagus then shook his head, a response that was sheepishly mimicked by Mycaelis. “Never heard of them.”

“Interesting,” Marvin stroked his chin. “Then we shall meet with them on the morrow.”

“We’re not going anywhere.” Mycaelis finally broke his silence, much to Vagus’ discomfort.  
  
“And where, fa fooks sake, do yer intend ter go?” snapped Marvin, tiring of Mycaelis' insolence. “Wanna sit ‘round here like a sack ‘o shite all dae? I need ter find oyt what yer are. Even if yer are just a simple sack ‘o shite, at least den I’ll know it so.”

Mycaelis rose in defiance, “I know who I am, ya old bastard!”

Marvin rose from his chair, and stood Mycaelis down. He wasn’t angry, how could he be? He was too tired to be angry. His tussle with Thrax had left his body aching like it had been chewed up and spat out by a Gyarados. "Enough. Ye two best try to get more rest, because I tell yer now, I need it more than yer do with all the shite ye’ve stirred todae. Off with yer. Narda will wake us come dawn. We’ll have a fair walk.”

Without another word, Marvin soundlessly made his way over to his bed of reeds. He sighed the moment his head made contact with the makeshift pillow. He watched on as Mycaelis and Vagus nestled up in the bed they had made for them earlier. Marvin’s eyes did not close until he watched Mycaelis close his eyes and slip into slumber.

_Marvin's dreams seemed kinder to him that night, as though a hole that had been torn in his heart was being filled by something that he had lost many years ago. His little ones played in the lake before him, paddling and splashing one another in some game that only children could understand. It made Marvin smile to see such a sight as the sun bore down on him in all its brilliance. He enjoyed dreams like this, his grey and tattered Floatzel fur returned to the orange of its prime years, his muscles ached no longer and his heart soared, no longer feeling broken._

_It was then he noticed a blue eyed Absol at his side. Randhir was older here, fully grown, just the way Marvin recalled him when he was in good health and before he sired two sons of his own. Randhir was an excellent specimen of his kind, he stood proud, motionless, watching the children play. Marvin rarely ever saw him smile, yet there would have been little for him to smile about. Marvin's little ones were enjoying an experience that Randhir's children would likely be denied during their lives._   
  
_"Hey," Marvin regarded his friend with a smile, "maybe one dae when yer have kids o' yer own. Ye'll know de same joy."_   
  
_"Perhaps." Randhir's was as deadpanned as always, his eyes fixed on the two Buizels in the lake. "But I doubt there will be much joy. The young are ever so vulnerable. Always in need of protection."_   
  
_Even in these more pleasant dreams, ones that seemed like long forgotten memories, Marvin could not escape his failure. He sighed and regarded Randhir mournfully, "I...tried all I could."_   
  
_At this Randhir's brow furrowed, "No, I tried. You? Not. Hard. Enough." He promptly turned his back on Marvin, walking away._   
  
_Before Marvin could pursue, he could hear whispers from Mycaelis and Vagus, whether they were part of the dream or seeping in from the outside, he could not tell._   
  
_"He seems like a good bloke," Vagus' candid voice whispered._   
  
_"What if he's with those monsters," Mycaelis hissed, "he'll be the end of us."_   
  
_Marvin's head darted left, right and center, searching for the source of the noise. He never found it._   
  
_Vagus giggled. "Afraid of an old man, son of Gaius the Great?"_   
  
_"Hey, I'm afraid of no one," snarled Mycaelis._   
  
_"Then we've got nothing to worry about. Look, we're in this together. There's a whole world here for us. We can be whatever we want."_   
  
_Vagus words seemed wise, but it was Mycaelis that spoke words of wisdom that even Marvin could not dispute. "And what makes you think this world wants us in it? We can be lots of things, but being normal will never be one of them."_   
  
_And so the dream faded, giving way to pure sleep in which Marvin found a large measure of comfort._   
  


_* * *_

The rays of early dawn did their best to seep through the thick layer of forest branches as Marvin, carrying a bucket laden with berries hanging by his side, led the way into the depths of the forest. Creeping Forest, as it was known, was frequented by locals, but passing through its deeper crevices were usually avoided in favor of main roads. 

“Abnormals,” Marvin began, speaking back at the two boys who followed him. “We know dem as de native inhabitants of Oat. They’ve been ‘round for as long as history has been ‘round to record dem. At least our recording of history. Most folk never really care to hear much of theirs. They didn’t care for it then, and dey certainly don’t care ‘bout it now.”

Mycaelis let out an insulting yawn. “And I don’t honestly blame them, who the fuck could care about boring crap like that?”

Marvin simply ignored Mycaelis’ snide comments whenever they arose. Vagus seemed to have caught onto the tactic and followed Marvin’s example. Still, Mycaelis remained being Mycaelis as he always was and as he always would be for many years to come. 

“What’s so interesting about Abnormals?” asked Vagus.

“They are like you two in almost every respect,” answered Marvin, moving aside some foliage. “You two showed strength yesterday da likes of which I've only ever seen in an Abnormal. Yer fight like them, walk like them. Yer share der strength, der perception,” he glanced at Mycaelis, “an’ der wrath as well.”

“Everything?” asked Vagus surprised.   
  
“No…not quite. While many types o’ Pokémon can fall under de Abnormal breed, all o’ ‘em, at least the pure blooded ones, have a pair o’ startlin’ blue eyes. They will be certain to strike a chill into ye the moment ye see dem.”  
  
Vagus exchanged a look with Mycaelis and could tell that even he was surprised and intrigued at what Marvin was telling them. Vagus soon had his answer.

“These Abnormals,” said Mycaelis, “how strong are they? Stronger than me?”  
  
At this, Marvin simply smiled, “perhaps ye may have met yer match yet, young Mycaelis.”  
  
The group of three continued to walk for hours, some of them spent in silence others spent in conversation, this was until Marvin came to an abrupt stop. So abruptly did Marvin bring himself to a halt that Vagus and Mycaelis bumped into his back nearly sending him toppling over. “Keep yer voices down,” hissed Marvin his eyes scanning the forest ahead.

They had reached the entrance to a hidden glade, concealed by mist and darkness and flanked by a rocky promontory that loomed over Marvin and his charge. The rays of the morning sun did not reach this far and the mist kissed the trunks of trees all around. Marvin had been to this spot many times before, but never had he once let his guard down. His friends, the Abnormals, were dangerously cautious and Marvin knew that they had every right to be, especially considering what the other townsfolk would think of them.  
  
“Stavros?” he called out, hoping his call would rise up the promontory and reach the ears of the glade’s lone sentinel. “It’s me, Marvin. I got two lil ones with me. We’re coming in.”

Before Marvin could even take a step forward a pair of glowing blue eyes shot out at him from the mist, piercing their way through the distance and making Marvin’s fur stand on its end. The mist soon gave way as the ground trembled slightly. From the promontory that loomed over them, the rocky and robust sphere of a Golem emerged to tower above them; his eyes were as blue as the mid-day sky and glowed with an eerie aura that made Vagus shift uneasily on the spot. There was an air of something supernatural about Stavros, an unworldly feel that inspired unease in anyone. It was no wonder why his kind were forced to hide so far within the depths of Oat’s largest forest.

“Well met, Marvin,” his voice rumbled calmly, looking down at Marvin. “It is a pleasure to receive you,” his eyes wondered to the bucket at Marvin’s side, “and your provisions.”

Marvin simply regarded Stavros with a smile, greeting his old friend. “I trust it will also be a pleasure to receive these two here?” He stepped aside and allowed Vagus and Mycaelis to present themselves before the sentinel. They were beginning to look like a pair of scared children trying to hide behind their mother’s skirts. Marvin knew they had to look worthier than that in order to make a good first impression on an Abnormal.  
  
With a leap Stavros jumped from the top of the promontory and landed with a rumble before them. Birds darted from trees as the earth resounded with Stavros' landing. Stavros snarled, eyeing the two boys and showing his disdain for outsiders. He had every right to as far as Marvin was concerned; the villagers back in town would have likely lynched him on sight or would have at least found a reason to do so. Mysterious fires, illnesses, missing children, a tainted water supply, it mattered not; whenever something occurred that could not be explained, Abnormals were always brought in to make them explained. They were, after all, to blame for everything.

With a heavy heart, Marvin recalled the day when he and his mate debated the subject with the Toxicroak, Crass. “These freakish creatures,” Marvin recalled him saying, “they peer at us with their glowing blue eyes and isolate themselves from us and the world. Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because they think they’re too good for it. They are an abhorrence, and thus we shall treat them as such.”

Stavros meanwhile continued to eye Mycaelis and Vagus. “These two are not permitted to enter,” he moved closer and shot a disappointed look at Marvin. “You should know better than to bring outsiders here, you old fool. We cannot risk another migration to escape the scrutiny of the villagers. We lost too many in our last one as it is.”

Marvin said nothing for a moment, but then uttered words that made Stavros’ sapphire eyes bulge. “Stavros,” he whispered, “dey came from Prismatic Jungle.”

Stavros was quick to compose himself. “Very well, but you must take them straight to Daedalus. No loitering unless he approves.”

“Understood,” Marvin nodded and handed Stavros the berry bucket. “I trust ye will know where to take these.” 

“Of course,” Stavros accepted the bucket with a polite bow. “We’ve been getting desperate. This blasted forest produces so little in these parts. I do miss the mountains.”  
  
Marvin gave him a reassuring pat on his large rocky shell and slid past him into the glade with Mycaelis and Vagus following close behind. His thoughts took pity on Stavros, but nonetheless came to a cold resolve. This is yer home now, me friend. And as much as me heart breaks ter think of it, it may also be yer grave.


	5. Existence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Received feedback that Marvin's and Narda's accents made it too difficult for readers, particularly those from non-English speaking backgrounds, to understand. In the interest of ensuring my work is as accessible as possible, I decided to water down their accents from this point on.

The air was still upon entering the glade. The forest brush and trees gave way to reveal a wall of glowing blue eyes that gazed at the three entering strangers. The Abnormals, Pokémon of all kinds, gazed at Marvin when he entered with Mycaelis and Vagus in tow. He had been here more than a dozen times, but the greeting he received had always been cold. The native inhabitants of Oat; reduced from once continent sprawling clans to now small isolated tribes that cowered in the darkest recesses of their ancient land.

Marvin was never one to ask for a warm welcome from them. They had every right to treat him with suspicion regardless of how many of them he was able to feed with his occasional tribute of berries. With Abnormals, friends amongst outsiders quickly became impotent when they were faced with the overwhelming pressures of a murderous lynch mob.

It wasn’t long until the Abnormals dispersed and went about their own business, content with the fact that the outsider was someone they knew and meant them no peril. Yet still amongst those that gathered, Marvin was able to pick out a set of smiles amongst the scores of blue eyed faces. Two young Absols, no older than Mycaelis and Vagus ran towards Marvin calling his name and beaming brightly. It was as though Marvin were the first ray of sunshine that they had seen in months.

“Marvin!” chimed one of the young Absols who bore a scar across his left cheek. “About time you made it back again! It’s been ages!” He pounced up against Marvin’s side where Marvin returned the smile.

“Yea, ages!” agreed the other Absol, this one with a shaggy tuff of fur about his head. “Say, did ya bring any food again, Marvin? Been hungry for days.”

“Sure I did,” beamed Marvin, patting both the boys’ manes and pulling them into a hug with his good arm. “Didn’t think I’d come empty handed now, did ya? Stavros will see to it that you get it.”

“Boys!” snarled an aged and well-spoken voice. Behind the two Absol’s a large male plodded, his shoulders were broad and his fur greyed and rustled by time. Randhir’s once flawless walk was now punctuated by a limp that only seemed to grow worse and more pronounced the older he grew. His eyes were as lifeless as ever, now even more so, even when addressing his own children.

“Astinos,” Randhir called to the Absol with the scar, “I recall instructing you to not leap on our guest.” He then looked at the Absol with shaggy tuffs of fur, “and you Stelios, I certainly expected better than you to demand a gift.”

Both the Absol brothers bowed their heads. “Sorry, father,” they both responded in unison. They stood aside and allowed Randhir to approach Marvin. Marvin embraced his old friend with his good arm and caught a rare smile from the aged Absol who appeared as old as he was.

“Good to see you again, old friend,” Marvin spoke sternly.

“As it is good to see you. I see you have stayed in good health.” It was then he noticed Marvin’s arm, “most of you at least.”

“That, erm, brings us to my visit here.” He turned his attention to Mycaelis and Vagus and presented them to Randhir. “I’d like you to meet Vagus and Mycaelis,”

If Vagus thought that Stavros’ eyes were heavy with scrutiny, then Randhir’s felt like a damned avalanche. He nearly grovelled before them, like whenever he felt the weight of his father’s eyes. Yet behind Randhir’s eyes there was a cold dispassion, rather than the malice and disgust of his father’s eyes.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Vagus nodded politely.

Randhir managed a low and brief chuckle. “I take it you’re the one that took a chunk out of Marvin’s arm.”

Vagus shifted uneasily. “N-no, sir. Not a chunk. A...erm, it was an accident.”

Mycaelis meanwhile was eying both Astinos and Stelios with a stern glare, one which both brothers returned with a smile and a sense of excitement. Marvin suspected that this was likely the first encounter with outsiders their age. They seemed completely oblivious, naïve even, of the monster that had been lovingly planted within the Charmander before them.

“Accident?” Randhir regarded Marvin with a faint smirk. “Either this Totodile has the strength of a Croconaw, or you’ve become more senile that I have feared.”

Marvin laughed. “Like you’re one to talk, you old coot,” he jested, smacking Randhir on the back where it produced a grunt from him. “But I must see Daedalus.”

“Of course,” Randhir then turned to Astinos and Stelios. “Wait for me by the den. Keep your sister company.” Both the Absols nodded and bounded off, but not before throwing a curious glance back and Mycaelis and Vagus.

When the Absol brothers were out of ear shot, Marvin followed Randhir towards Daedalus’ sanctum, a small tent suspended by branches at the far end of the glade. The two old friends walked far ahead of Mycaelis and Vagus, far enough to keep their conversation out of earshot, or so they thought.

“It grows harder for Daedalus every day,” continued Randhir. “Even with your help, the prospect of another migration is becoming more inevitable the longer we stay here. We already lost so many coming here.”

“Aye,” affirmed Marvin, “and Guildmaster Carlos is under pressure to force teams to venture deeper into this forest. Crass and the villagers are persistent in catching you, Randhir.”

“I can’t hide forever, Marvin. The day must come where I must submit to my destiny.”

Marvin felt sorrow grip his heart. The feelings of the past began to haunt him once more, feelings that remained in dreams and nightmares crawled into his waking thoughts. “You’re not the monster you think you are, Randhir. What happened to Elia…”

Randhir stopped and shot a fierce glance at Marvin. “I know what I am. I’m an old cripple; one who can’t even hunt to support his two boys. My death will be of no consequence to them, but my continued existence will. Unlike you, I know what I have to do to protect my children.”

Marvin bowed his head in shame. He was beginning to lose his composure. “I…I don’t want to lose you, too. You…Narda…you’re all that’s left.”

Randhir growled. “Steel yourself. If Daedalus sees you in this state, he’ll throw whatever it is you have to say to the wind.” He swept a quick look behind him at Mycaelis and Vagus who trailed behind. “And them, not sure what they are doing in your company, but they best not catch you so…moody.”

Marvin nodded and raised his head high, taking a deep breath and seeing the wisdom in his friend’s words. He had an example to set for Mycaelis and Vagus. He arrived at the entrance of the tent. Randhir left Marvin’s side and slipped pass the tent’s flap while Marvin remained outside. As an outsider, he had to wait to be admitted. Mycaelis and Vagus caught up with him.

“Gotta admit,” grumbled Mycaelis with a faint smile, “this place is pretty sweet. Feels like home.”

Marvin shuddered, disturbed by the fact that a place like this was what Mycaelis would nostalgically refer to as ‘home.' 

“What are we doing here, Marvin?” Vagus queried. “What does Daedalus want to do with us?”

Marvin shook his head, “The heck I’d know. But if there’s anyone here that would know anything about you, it would be Daedalus. Now, when you meet him, you greet him and address with the utmost respect and, as children, you will bow your heads and address him as Elder Daedalus, is that understood?”

“Understood,” replied both Vagus and Mycaelis.

At that moment Randhir emerged from the tent. “He will speak with you, Marvin,” he regarded both Mycaelis and Vagus with a conspicuous gaze, “but these two must remain here for now.” 

Marvin muttered something to Randhir about keeping an eye on a certain Charmander before entering the tent. What followed was one of the most uncomfortable silences Vagus had ever experienced, he and Mycaelis gazed at Randhir and the aged Absol gazed right back at them. 

Vagus' desire to ask questions soon broke the ice. “I hear you guys have lived in this land…for hundreds of years,”

“Then you heard wrong,” Randhir spoke ever smoothly, “we have lived in this land for __thousands__ of years, it is the common folk that have lived here for hundreds.”

Vagus was taken aback by the statement. “I see.”

“I take it that Marvin told you of what became of us during those years?”

“He did.”

Randhir gave a solemn nod. “Good. Though our blood runs dry and our numbers dwindle, I hope to die knowing that our story will live on.”

“Can I ask ya a question?” Mycaelis asked, being unusually polite. 

“You may.”

“Do you hate them? The commoners. For…what they did to your kind?”

Randhir paused for a long moment before speaking. “I can’t.”

“Why not? You’re all the last of your kind now.”

“Because the day will come when we, both Abnormal and commoner alike, will reconcile. Where history will be written in stone instead of blood, where the common folk will realise the crimes that their forefathers committed and will offer us their hand in kinship. I want to hate them, for all they have done, but I can’t, for there needs to be at least one of us willing to accept that hand and put an end to this nightmare. Perhaps it will not come in my lifetime or Marvin’s, but maybe it may come in yours and my own sons. It is for them that I must set this example for.”

“And others ‘round you will be keen on accepting their hand?” Mycaelis snarled. “From Stavros I can tell that there are others that will just as likely bite it.”

“There is no bite left in us, boy. My kin are dying. Either we accept the hand or let our name fade into dust like we never existed. Our breed may fade, but its story will live on. All I’ve ever wanted was that …and to see my children play in the waters of Oat Lake, as Marvin’s once did.”

Those last words intrigued Vagus to no end. “Marvin has kids?” Vagus queried. “Where are they?”

From the moment he first met Randhir, Vagus always thought that he would never see a hint of an expression in the Absol’s glaring and unflinching eyes. Yet now they bore unconstrained pain and sorrow within. Randhir knew his grief was apparent and thus looked away from Vagus. “I...should not have said that.” He looked back at Vagus, far more focused now. “If you swear not to breathe a word to Marvin, I will tell you as much as I can. Do you swear it?”

Vagus knew he had struck something deep within the aged and hardened Absol. That he had torn open once gaping wounds that had never truly healed.  
  
“On our mother’s grave,” declared Vagus.

“And our father’s,” added Mycaelis.

“Very well. There was an Aggron named-”

The flap of the tent quickly swung open as a disgruntled Marvin stormed out. He looked like he had just gone toe to toe with Thrax again; tired and exhausted. “Daedalus will see you now. I told him all about your little story. Come.”

Marvin gave a thankful nod towards Randhir and held holding the flap of the tent open for Mycaelis and Vagus. The Absol nodded them farewell, padding away into the glade. “I hope to see you later."

The scent of rare herbs filled Vagus' nostrils upon entering the tent. He immediately felt his Laconian senses become overwhelmed by the smell and the glare of bright blue lights that radiated from a number of crystals around the tent. It didn’t feel or smell unpleasant, but was something that Vagus found strangely unsettling. 

From the far end of the tent an Alakazam was pouring over a map and examining a nearby crystal. He didn’t even turn to face his guests when he spoke.

“Enter, little ones,” his voice was as clam and smooth as a frozen lake. He took a moment, but eventually turned his attention to Marvin and his young company. 

“Hello, Elder Daedalus,” both of the boys said, bowing their heads ever so slightly in unison.

The Abnormal elder approached the two brothers and cast over them a pair of curious eyes that Vagus had grown all too familiar with since arriving at the glade. Vagus looked up at Marvin at what to do next, but only got a reassuring nod. It was then that Daedalus knelt beside Mycaelis and with a snap of his fingers, a bright orange light flared through the tent as the gems around them glowed like the afternoon sun, bathing them all in a bright but pleasant light. 

“Let’s start with you,” he tapped Mycaelis arm. “Lift them for me please.”

Mycaelis gave Vagus a foul look, one that he always gave Vagus when he was confused by something that was beyond the scope of his comprehension. Needless to say, it was a look that Vagus was familiar with seeing. But even Vagus seemed befuddled at what the Alakazam was planning.

Mycaelis reluctantly complied and outstretched his arms. Daedalus cast his eyes over Mycaelis arms, running his fingers across the iron muscles that had been forged in the heat of a savage jungle by a father who knew no remorse, whose goal in life was to build a monster far greater than himself. 

“Excellent muscle tone,” Daedalus murmured before moving on to examine the Charmander’s armband. 

It didn’t take long until a degree of smugness reached Mycaelis and he seemed to enjoy having his body marvelled at by someone else. Daedalus soon took hold of Mycaelis' cheek and gazed deep into his eyes, tilting Mycaelis head from side to side, examining it over in the bright light. His attention then turned to Mycaelis’ back spike which he seemed to be fascinated by. “One seldom sees these spikes on Charmanders now years. The trait mostly went extinct centuries ago. Your bloodline must be ancient and well preserved.”

Daedalus rose from the ground and waved his arm through the air. A __Light Screen__ came into existence before Mycaelis, leaving him staring at it perplexed. “Strike this barrier as hard as you can until it breaks.”

Mycaelis nodded and with a vicious snarl he drove a head-butt into the barrier, when it held firm he recoiled and struck at it with a quick barrage of punches and scratches. The barrier held firm for a while, but eventually shattered when Mycaelis rammed the full force of his body into it.

“Impressive,” mumbled Daedalus. “Now, stand aside. Let me examine your Totodile brother.”

Daedalus ran the same procedure with Vagus. He trailed his aged and experienced eyes over his arms and body. Unlike Mycaelis’ examination, Vagus did not hear a word from Daedalus, but could detect a concerned look in his eye. The Alakazam said nothing else when he cast his eyes down Vagus’ spine and concluded his examination.

Mycaelis meanwhile was regarding Vagus with a confident smile, his ignorance bestowing the belief that Vagus would soon face the same test as he did and would pass with flying colours. To a mind as ignorant and indoctrinated as Mycaelis', his way of thinking was simple. They were brothers, both sons of Gaius the Great, both sons that he could be proud of, Laconians whose strength could be matched by no other. It was that smile that gave Vagus something that he always dreaded, another expectation he had to live up to.

“Okay,” sighed Daedalus, creating the same __Light Screen__ that he had for Mycaelis. “Get to it.”

Vagus wasted no time. He shot a __Water Pulse__ at the barrier before charging it and ramming it with his head. He mimicked Mycaelis movements as best he could, clawing at the screen, driving punches, and loosing the occasional __Aqua Tail__ against it. Despite all his efforts, Vagus could not make it fall as timely as Mycaelis.

As time dragged on, Vagus began to feel a sharp pain in his limbs, it started as a burn but soon felt as though a blade had been thrust between where his muscles met his bones. He grunted in agony, trying to keep his grunts from developing into moans. He hated this feeling. It always gripped him whenever he overdid his attacks like this. The barrier had to break eventually.  
  
It did not. And as the minutes dragged by, Mycaelis’ once proud smile soon faded, replaced by a look of anxiousness, as though the brother he had known his entire life was being stripped apart piece by piece, slowly revealing who he really was; a welp, as his father would call him. And Gaius was right, oh so right. Right and ashamed, so ashamed that even Mycaelis was kept oblivious to the true extent of just how pathetic his own brother was. And now that shame was his to behold.

Vagus lungs ceased up, he gasped for breath. Soon his vision blurred and with his head screaming in pain, he fell to the ground panting and coughing. The barrier still stood, a visibly shaken Mycaelis looking at a brother he never knew was so pitifully weak, a brother had nothing to justify his own existence.   
  
Marvin gazed on as equally stunned, and soon Vagus felt the familiar gazes of disappointment and ridicule that those in his other life had given, a life he had thought he had left behind, a life where those who had offered him scrutiny were no longer alive to give it.

Daedalus waved away the _Light Screen_. “Interesting,” he murmured, “come hither.”

He gently lifted Vagus to his feet and pressed an ear against his chest, listening to his heart. His fingers came about and checked Vagus’ pulse. It pulsed as though he had just run several marathons. He offered Vagus no explanation, no consolation, nothing. 

Daedalus turned to Marvin, a fierce look flashed across his eyes. “I’m done examining them. They can leave.” He offered both the boys a weak smile. Mycaelis and Vagus nodded their thanks to their elder and scampered out of the tent. Daedalus soon turned to Marvin with a dissatisfied frown, the smile he had before was gone. 


	6. Difference

Vagus was lost. Laconian? Commoner? Abnormal? He drifted in a part of the world where the eye could not see, wandering paths unmapped towards destinations that turned to ash the moment he touched them. Where new horizons dawned only to fall into an endless night where he stood alone. This was his world now. A world of grey where he found no light or darkness, where he could find only one word that could define the person he was: A disappointment. Not Laconian. Not a commoner. Not an Abnormal. A disappointment.

Vagus often realised that he was not much different to Mycaelis at all, they both bore an intense hatred for something. Mycaelis hated weakness as it was taught to him by his father, but Vagus hated something far more spiteful than weakness, he hated hope. He hated it when it compelled him onward with false grandeurs and promises, deluding him with scenarios of what could be, and destroying him time and time again when it cast him into the bottomless pit that was reality. In a way, he found it in himself to love his father. His brother gave him hope. His mother gave him hope. But his father, as cruel as he was, never once tortured him with delusions of what could be, and for that Vagus loved him.   
  
Mistake. Failure. Accident. As they walked from the tent, Vagus hugged his arms close to his chest, wandering forward idly, treading his unmapped path as Mycaelis trailed behind him. He was in complete ignorance of Mycaelis, immersed in his own grey, colourless world. He walked and walked until his knees wobbled and buckled. He fell against a tree at the far end of the glade, where the mist mostly obscured him from sight.   
  
Mycaelis said nothing as he stood with a pair of crossed arms and watched as his brother sulked. He stood for a while, a certain agitation growing within him. “Why didn’t ya ever tell me? That there was something wrong with you.”  
  
“Like you would have ever listened to begin with!” snapped Vagus, spinning around and staring at Mycaelis through a pair of vicious tear filled eyes. “The only thing you listened to is what you wanted to hear! Or what Dad told you to hear! Nothing else!”  
  
To Vagus surprise, Mycaelis simply shrugged. “I think you’re right on that one. Dad, Mum…they never told me.”  
  
“But yet I told you! I told you I was a lost cause! And you still thought I could become something I’ll never be! You thick-headed moron!”  
  
“Well, it’s not your fault it was-”  
  
“Shut up! You and I both know you're useless at the whole cheer-up thing so don’t even bother! Ever again! I’m not who you’ve thought I’ve been. I’m not Laconian, I’m…I’m…,” he gulped back more tears, “I don’t know what I am.” His thoughts turned back to those past days when not so long ago he sat in his family hovel, pouring over the runes of the Unown where his father came to offer his usual disapproval. __“Such is an occupation for cripples and weaklings.”__  
  
Mycaelis gave a conceding nod, breathing a sigh through his nostrils. The vicious and obnoxious Charmander seemed humbled by the very sight of what had transpired in the tent, like another part of his world had just fallen apart. His mind must have been pouring over ever last tale his father had told him about the Laconians, trying to find an inkling of a clue that would explain Vagus’ ailment.   
  
Mycaelis spoke. “You remember how Dad used to say that not all Pokémon were born as perfect as I was? You know, how that they were born with some sort of problem or sickness in the head or body? You reckon you’re one of ‘em? You think that it runs in my blood too? Maybe…maybe there have been other sick Laconians before like you? What do ya reckon happened to ‘em? Maybe they got treated like slaves like you were or what if…fuck…what if they got killed after they hatched?”  
  
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Vagus began to laugh. It was a joyous laugh; he then gazed at Mycaelis with a teary smile. “Mycaelis…you’re…you’re…”  
  
“I’m what?” Mycaelis looked at him puzzled as to what was the sudden source of his joy.  
  
“You’re asking questions…as in…actually thinking and questioning things in the world around you.” He laughed. “You’ve finally done it.”  
  
Mycaelis cracked a smile. “Well, I guess I did, didn’t I? Not that hard really.”  
  
Vagus sighed and wiped away his tears. At least he had succeeded in doing something for once in his life. In just a single moment, Mycaelis had dragged him from the pits of despair and back into a world he wanted to be a part of. He may not know what he was, or who he was, but as long as he had the need to keep Mycaelis guided and to focused, he would always have a purpose in this world and that was all he needed.  
  
“Vagus!” a young voice chimed. Astinos and Stelios, the young Absol brothers came bounding towards them through the mist, sporting their gleeful smiles.  
  
Stelios came to Vagus’ side. “Woah, you like so took forever in that tent with the old geezer. He gives me the creeps.”  
  
Mycaelis chuckled. “Aye, I reckon.”  
  
“Marvin will probably be a while talking with him,” replied Vagus simply making conversation. He noticed that Mycaelis seemed more talkative than before.  
  
“Man, why do old people talk so much?” pondered Astinos. “It’s all they ever do!”  
  
Mycaelis crossed his arms. “Probably because they’re too old to do anything else.”  
  
The group laughed.   
  
“C’mon guys, my brother and I got someone we’d like ya to meet,” said Stelios leading Mycaelis and Vagus towards their den.  
  
“And who might that be?” pondered Mycaelis.  
  
“Oh, our little sister. Her name’s Kareena.” 

Back in the tent, the situation was growing precarious and increasingly grim. “I am going to be frank with you, my friend,” Daedalus began, dimming the lights in his tent. “They certainly are peculiar, but I have my doubts that they are one of us Abnormals. They lack the glow in their eyes and those armbands bare emblems I have never seen before. And as for the Totodile…well…he does have my sympathies.”

“What’s wrong with Vagus?” Alarm had crept into Marvin’s tone; he seemed to be fretting over Vagus’ health like he were one of his own children.

“He is sickly. Born sickly. Lethargy, we call it.”  
  
“Lethargy?” scoffed Marvin. “That’s all your brilliant mind could come up with to describe it?”  
  
“At least that’s what I know it as. An uncommon disorder that runs in the blood, one that my tribe has been fortunate enough to live without. It is known to heavily sap a Pokémon’s strength, preventing them from engaging in the stresses of combat for any more than a short period of time. I’m sure that he has great power, but he will forever be cursed with the inability to bring it to bare.”

“Can he be cured?”

“Cured? There is only one I know of, and it is a cruel one indeed.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll do it!”

“It’s not up to you, Marvin, but to him. Vagus’ evolution is the key, and with at least two more stages left in him, he may likely overcome the disorder.”

“Well, if it’s so simple, then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is this, those born with Lethargy rarely ever evolve. The disorder itself has the capacity to keep a Pokémon from reaching their fullest potential, thus preventing evolution all together.”  
  
At this Marvin snarled. “Why would you describe that as cruel?”  
  
“Tell me, Marvin. Do you know what the cruellest thing you can give a child like Vagus is?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Hope. The more you give him, the more he will fail, and the more he fails, the more he will grow to hate you.”

Marvin sighed. “I suppose I know now why his father treated him like shit.”

“Indeed. I doubt any father would be pleased to learn of such a flaw in their offspring. But Mycaelis, on the other hand, has the ability to match, or even surpass, any Abnormal here. No child has been able to break my __light screen__ so quickly, let alone a matured adult. You say that he and Vagus took down a fully grown Arbok?”

“One of the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

“Impressive. But as for their story of Prismatic Jungle," his eyes narrowed, "I must say, it is quite the tale.”

“There is none of your kind living in the jungle?”

At this Daedalus grimaced. “I may still have occasional contact with our other clans throughout Oat, but I have heard nothing about our kind living in that retched place. Marvin, the land there is cursed. Only the mad and the desperate dare to tread there.”

“Then what am I to do, Daedalus? The children need care. Will you not take them into your clan?”  
  
“I feared that you’d put that question to me the moment you brought them to my tent.” Daedalus fell silent for a moment, his pondering eyes gazing idly into the depths of a crystal, his brilliant mind in deep thought. “They are not Abnormals, Marvin. Rightfully, I cannot accept either of them.”  
  
Marvin stood stunned and perplexed. “But if they’re not Abnormals, then what the fuck are they? Surely the stories that their mother told them can’t be true?”  
  
At this Daedalus scoffed. “Pah! Spare me the desperate lies of a whore. A shamed mother will do all she can to preserve her dignity. I would imagine she would have spun a very intricate web of tales and lies to conceal her disgrace. I do pity the children for becoming so tangled in it.”  
  
“What're ya on about?” demanded Marvin.  
  
  
“Mycaelis and Vagus? I’ll tell you what they likely are. They’re half-bred Abnormals, Marvin. I’d wager that this story-telling mother of theirs was one of us. Likely ran from her clan to mate with some commoner. It happens more often than you may think despite how much we try to discourage such ventures.”  
  
“And you expect me to tell them that? That their mother was a whore and their father some licentious nutcase?”

“How you want to break it to them I leave to you. However, Mycaelis is unlike anything I have ever seen, there is something unnatural that runs in that boy’s blood, something divine if I dare say. If we were to add his blood with ours, breed him with our females once he matures, there may be hope for my brethren yet.”  
  
“You want him as a seed bank?” spat Marvin feeling appalled. “He’s barely a youth!”

“And yet he may hold the key to our salvation. I can take Mycaelis, I can abide your request and justify his adoption into the tribe, but as for Vagus, Marvin, I am struggling to justify his right to even exist.”

“You’re starting to sound like their monster of a father,” snarled Marvin, clearly displeased in which direction this conversation had gone. “You’re asking me to separate two siblings that have nothing left in this world but each other?”

“The world is a big place, Marvin. Vagus will find his place in it surely enough. I am asking you to do what is right, Marvin. For both Mycaelis and my kin. You have always done right by us, we have always considered you a friend.”

For a moment Marvin paused, his gaze resting at his feet. He recalled the storm in which he found the two boys, huddled under the hollow of a tree, Vagus doing all he could to keep his brother alive. His arm still ached from the bite Vagus had given him, defending his brother tooth and claw. He recalled them huddled up and asleep by the fire back home, he recalled them working in unison to save his life from Thrax, but most of all Marvin recalled his own sons and felt a measure of peace in knowing that they were there for each other when they end came for them.   
  
“I-I can’t,” said Marvin, his tired gaze locking with Daedalus. “I won’t separate them. Be they bastards of your kind or not, they have lost everything and now have nothing left but each other. Please, Daedalus,” he pleaded, “will you not take them both?”

Daedalus’ eyes narrowed defiantly. “My answer still stands. No. Whatever Vagus’ place may be in this world, it is not with us.”

Agitated, Marvin sighed in annoyance. “So that’s it? After all I’ve done to protect and feed your people, this is the thanks I get?”  
  
“You misunderstand,” Daedalus retorted. “We have nothing but the deepest gratitude for your efforts, my decision is nothing personal. We are a dying race, Marvin. We, the creatures who you and the others call ‘Abnormals,’ only wish to preserve our breed and ethnicity. I cannot allow our breed, which has stood for countless millennia, to be diluted further by the likes of Vagus. I cannot allow the illness that lingers in his blood to spread through my tribe.”

Marvin began to grow increasingly disgusted with each word that he heard. Anger crept into his tone. “These children are without parents, purpose or an identity in this world, and all you can speak of is the purity of your breed?”

His words struck a nerve in Daedalus, perhaps for a moment Marvin was able to show the Alakazam the wrongness of his thoughts, something which Daedalus clearly didn’t appreciate. “Don’t you speak of children, Marvin” An ice cold chill had crept into Daedalus' tone. “Astinos, Stelios and little Kareena now have a cripple for a father, and why? Because you were not there for your children.” 

The words cut deeper than any one of Vagus’ bites could have. Marvin wobbled on the spot for a moment, his knees feeling weak. He felt nothing but sorrow at being reminded of his failings that cost him all that held dear. He regarded Daedalus, who he thought was his friend, with a tortured expression. 

“You know?” Marvin began. “I have always tried to tell the villagers that this land can belong to both of us. That we can all live together, Abnormals and commoners both.” Anger surged into his tone. “But sometimes I wonder if the same thought has ever crossed your mind. Has it ever occurred to you why folk call you Abnormals and treat you like shit? You hide away from everyone, turn your noses up at us, and loath us, acting like you’re our superiors because your fucking eyes glow!”   
  
Daedalus was as cold as ever. “Careful, Marvin. Our friendship has always been strong, butyou best choose the right side when the time comes.”  
  
Marvin’s temper finally flared in earnest. The right side? Marvin had spent the better part of his life trying to erase the battle lines forged on both sides, for most of his life he had thought progress was being made, that his and Randhir's dream of unity between both breeds would become a reality, but now he saw the true extent of his progress before him. His war against belligerence had failed.  
  
“And what time might that be, eh?” Marvin snarled. “When you storm out of your lairs with some vain sense of bravado and get yourselves all killed? The commoners of Oat outnumber you a thousand to one. Perhaps it is best that you don’t take Mycaelis and Vagus after all. They’ll fare better in a jungle full of madness, than in the hands of a madman.”  
  
With those final words, he turned his back on Daedalus and stormed towards the flap of the tent. Before he was able to lift it, a final set of words came from the Alakazam behind him. He had now lost the composure known to his species and was awry with fury. 

“You watch yourself, Marvin!” bellowed Daedalus. “Our kind will rise again, and when we do, we will retake what was once ours. The invaders of our land will bow to their superiors. We will burn their homes and history as they burned ours. We will cast their children from the cliffs as they cast ours. We will slaughter their elders as they slaughtered ours, and we will make them pay for every drop of our blood that they spilt! We will have our vengeance!”

Not wanting to hear any more, Marvin stepped through the flap of the tent and viciously threw it shut with such force he nearly tore it loose. He stood outside the tent, his arms shaking with fury and emotion. He breathed deep in an effort to calm himself. He simply gazed up at the forest canopy that loomed overhead. There was not a single ray of light to be found. 


	7. Transience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features the last of Haychel's illustrations to date. Further chapters are currently not illustrated, but may be illustrated at some point in the future.

To one so young, the world was a blur. Touch and sound made sense of the things her eyes could barely see. Her mind was stirred from the voids of rest by the curious voices around her. Kareena peered through her half opened eyes, her bright blue irises glimmering between her eyelids. In the warmth of their den, she felt sleepy yet curious of those around her. Both her brothers were there, but there were others here too. Their eyes did not glow like those who lived in her small little world. One bore a pair of brilliant green eyes that shone like a pair of glistering emeralds, the other bore eyes of common hazel which burned with a ferocity known only to a world far from hers.

“You guys got a mum?” asked Mycaelis curiously as he addressed Astinos and Stelios.   
  
Astinos shook his head sorrowfully. “No,” he sighed, “we lost her during the migration.”  
  
Vagus felt a pang of remorse for the two brothers. "I'm sorry. Yea, our mum's gone too." 

“Migration?” asked Mycaelis.   
  
“We used to live in the mountain caves to the north.”  
  
“That far away?” Vagus had managed to briefly study a map of Oat before they left this morning. “It’s a long trek.”  
  
“It was,” responded Astinos, appreciating Vagus’ sentiment. “Daedalus said we had to move here. Said something evil was stirring in the caves.”

“Pah,” scoffed Stelios. “If you ask me he was just eating too many Pomeg berries.”

“Yea,” chuckled Astinos, “and those growls we heard during the night were his bowels giving way.”

There was a scuffle at the entrance to the den as a pair of aged blue eyes peered at the children from the outside. Randhir’s limped into his den, greeting Mycaelis and Vagus with a solemn nod.  
  
“It appears that Marvin is taking longer than I thought,” he rumbled, “but I suspect he should not be too much longer. Daedalus no longer has the patience of his former days,” his eyes turned to his own children. “Especially for those who mock him.”

“Sorry, Dad,” both Astinos and Stelios bowed their heads in shame.  
  
Randhir promptly proceeded to skulk over to his bed of leaves where he lay and rested his aching limb. He sighed and regarded both Mycaelis and Vagus with an exhausted expression. The Absol was as old as Marvin, yet had received the burden of fatherhood too late in his life. Vagus wondered how well Astinos and Stelios would survive when he was gone. He hoped that their tribe would look after their own.   
  
“It is unwise to mock the spirits that our kind can see,” lectured Randhir to his two sons. “When you boys are old enough, you will see them too. And perhaps they too will guide you both to greener pastures in the future.”  
  
“Spirits?” scoffed Mycaelis. “What do ya mean?”  
  
“The essence of those that have yet to pass into the void. On occasion, it lingers here in this world. Our eyes can see things that those of commoners cannot. Should the essence be strong enough, we may be able to see them, but if not we can always hear them. Whispering. Guiding. Telling us truths left untold, wisdom left unknown. It is both a tremendous gift…and a terrible burden.”  
  
“So you can see ghosts?” Vagus scratched the back of his head, making sense of Randhir.  
  
“If that’s your way of rationalising what their essence is, then yes. See them, hear them and at times understand them,” confirmed Randhir as he moved over to the side of the infant Absol.  
  
“Enough of such things. I take it you both have met Kareena?” he tenderly nuzzled his daughter with his snout as she lay drifting in and out of a light nap. “My youngest, she is. She hatched just last spring. Stavros was kind enough to carry her egg here.”  
  
It occurred to Vagus that Randhir seemed tired, exhausted almost both emotionally and physically. His composure mirrored Marvin’s in almost every aspect, a man who seemed but a shadow of their former selves. Robbed of their youth by time, broken upon the anvil that was life and now discarded with naught but the memories and dreams left to them.  
  
“What happened to you, Randhir?” asked Vagus.  
  
“Many things have happened to me during my life, my boy,” Randhir chuckled.  
  
“He means what happened to your hind leg, old man,” pressed Mycaelis, unsure if Vagus was being made fun of. “You hop around like a bloody Spoink.”  
  
“Ah, yes. Which takes me back to what I was trying to tell you about Marvin’s children. I was...there that day.”  
  
“I don’t wanna hear this story again, Dad,” Astinos pleaded. Stelios also seemed agitated by the words that were about to leave their father’s mouth.

Fortunately for the two Absol brothers, they never came to pass. Their manes fri.zzed up as they sensed the approach of heavy footsteps. At the entrance of the den appeared Marvin. Seething behind his eyes were a barely contained fury that even managed to make Mycaelis shift uneasily on the spot.  
  
“Boys! We’re leaving!” he snapped. “Come, let’s go.”  
  
“Huh? What’s up Marvin?” asked Vagus, sensing the disdain in Marvin’s voice. Both he and Mycaelis exited the den, followed closely by Astinos and Stelios. “Aren’t we staying?”  
  
“Change of plan, boys. We’re going back to the village.” Marvin was clearly redoubling his attempts to maintain a facade of calm about him. “Maybe you’ll meet Astinos and Stelios another time.”  
  
Shifting ever so slightly and taking each step gently, Randhir plodded from the den. He regarded Marvin with a single glance and, at that moment, understood all that had transpired within Daedalus’ tent. The Absol sighed and brooded. He said not a word but simply regarded his old friend with a mournful look. Marvin returned the gesture and nodded Randhir his thanks before turning and leaving.  
  
As Marvin wandered off towards the end of the clearing where they had entered, Mycaelis and Vagus lingered behind. Astinos and Stelios looked to their father, hoping he would speak words to Marvin to make him change his mind, but no words came. Instead, Astinos turned to the two Laconian brothers and bade them farewell.  
  
“It’s a shame,” said Astinos, “it would have been cool to hang out more.”  
  
Mycaelis nodded solemnly. “Maybe we’ll see you again sometime?”  
  
Before any further words could be exchanged, Marvin’s voice boomed from across the forest clearing. “Boys! Let’s move!”  
  
“We better go,” conceded Vagus, stepping away from the den, “he sounds awful mad.”  
  
“Yea, you better,” responded Stelios as Mycaelis and Vagus proceeded to dash after Marvin.  
  
And so the two Absol brothers were once again left alone with their father and infant sister. They watched on together as their friends from another world disappeared into the mist and vanished into its depths. This was their world. A dark forest clearing in the middle of a misty, forsaken wood. They wanted nothing more than for Mycaelis and Vagus to join them in it.

* * *

  
There was an awkward silence on the journey back home. The bright conversations between Vagus and Marvin on their inbound journey were nowhere to be heard. Marvin marched on ahead, the old Floatzel still seething in anger. Vagus recalled whenever his own father became agitated, but that always seemed to be whenever something didn’t go his way. Marvin’s anger was different, something born of pain and agony rather than perpetual immaturity. Daedalus had dealt him a hard blow.  
  
“Marvin. You wanna talk about what happened with Daedalus?”  
  
Marvin scowled. “There’s a lot I need to explain to both of you.”  
  
“What is there to explain?” demanded Mycaelis.  
  
Marvin sighed heavily and came to a stop. He turned to face them. He seemed to have calmed himself substantially during the walk back. “It’s…about your mother. Your mother and…the things she told you two about.”

“What did he say about mum?” Mycaelis crossed his arms.  
  
“Boys,” Marvin seemed tired and distant, “at the moment, my main concern is your future. Not your past. I will find use for your…abilities.”  
  
He continued on walking, the boys following him. “And how will you do that?” asked Mycaelis.  
  
“You boys ever heard of a Guild?”  
  
“Nope,” both Mycaelis and Vagus responded.  
  
“First time for everything, I suppose. You’ll find them in various places throughout the land. They employ Pokemon that have…unique sets of skills to do jobs for them. Each guild specialises in doing certain jobs. I used to work for the one in Oat village. They’re a prospecting guild. You register a team with them, they train you up, and then they send you out into arse-end of nowhere to find valuable minerals and stones. Then you keep a share of what you find.”  
  
“Well that explains why you’re such a bore,” chuckled Mycaelis. Vagus snarled at him, expecting Marvin to turn around and reprimand Mycaelis. He did not. The aged Flotzel continued to plod along and speak.  
  
“In recent years, however,” Marvin continued, “there has been lack finds. A guild starved for work will do just about anything to keep its teams operating. So it’s common for Guildmaster Carlos to take other jobs. Rescue missions, bounty contracts and other things that I’m sure you, Mycaelis, will enjoy.”  
  
“A-and you want us to work there?” asked Vagus, nerves creeping into his tone. “Aren’t we a bit young for that?”  
  
Marvin chuckled. He seemed to have regained some of his humour. “Randhir and I were half your current age when we first started. Drove my mother nuts. Carlos was always good to us. You two should be fine. It’s not like Guilds send kids into the depths of some cave to battle it out with a legendary. That’d be insane. Even for you, Mycaelis.”  
  
“Depends on the legendary,” scoffed Mycaelis. “Mum…she used to tell us about how groups of Laconians were so strong they could take down legendaries themselves.”  
  
Marvin sighed, his sorrow returning. The tales their mother told them seem to be growing taller by the day. Legendaries were the gods of this world, the landscapers and forest makers, the bringers of rain, snow and warm summers. They were mysterious creatures, spoken of in tales and stories recited endlessly around dinner tables and hearths alike. Few had ever claimed to have met a legendary, fewer still had claimed to have ever battled and escaped one, but none, save for bold liars, ever made the claim to have defeated one.  
  
“Mycaelis,” Marvin spoke morbidly, “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”  
  
“What do you mean?” rebuffed Mycaelis.  
  
Marvin turned away for a moment. By what right did he have to tell them that they were raised on falsehoods? However, by what right was he entitled to maintain the illusion created by their parents? Encounters with legendaries were no laughing matter. Many teams seeking fame and glory went in search of them, seeking to do battle with the mightiest of them. Those teams were never heard from again.  
  
The prospect of Mycaelis and Vagus falling under that same illusion horrified him. Taking down a full grown Arbok was one thing, but a legendary was simply beyond any scope of reason. The image of finding their battered and broken remains in some far flung cave or cavern haunted him. Just as the bodies of Marvin’s two young boys haunted him. As far as Marvin was concerned, he had no right to blind Mycaelis and Vagus to reality itself.  
  
Right now, their future was his priority. This had fallen to him. He would keep them safe. Give them purpose. Whatever these deceptions were, they must have been created for reasons beyond what either he or Daedalus could comprehend.  
  
An idea came to mind.  
  
“Come with me,” said Marvin to both brothers. They both exchanged confused looks with each other before following him.   
  
Marvin wandered off the track and the boys followed closely. As they walked, a profound smell began to course through the air, the stench of foliage decay that for Vagus felt nostalgic and reminded him of the swamps he occasional came across in the jungle. They plodded onwards off the track for a few moments before Marvin’s arm shout out in front of both Mycaelis and Vagus.  
  
“Stop,” whispered Marvin. “Don’t take a step closer. Just look.”  
  
Vagus looked forward as Marvin lowered his arm. Before him the forest gave way to a dense marsh blotted with pools of bog. The bog was as a black as the sky of a moonless and starless night. The bog bubbled and slightly churned as decaying gasses floated to the surface releasing a profound stench. Vagus and Mycaelis were used to the smell. The various swamps around the jungle were part of their home, but this seemed different. Something was unnatural about this marsh.  
  
“They call it the Undercroft,” began Marvin. “Believed to be the lair of the legendary Pokemon Celebi. They say that whoever steps foot within this bog will be ensnared by vines and dragged down into its depths. No matter how strong they are.”  
  
“Well if no one survives, where do the stories come from?” asked Vagus, his eyes taking in the sight before him.  
  
“I never said no one did survive,” corrected Marvin. “They say the bog leads to a place known as a Mystery Dungeon. A dungeon that constantly changes and alters randomly as you travel through it. Those who walk into this marsh are rarely heard from again and when they are heard from, it is not for many decades and, when they do remerge, they seem no older than when they first disappeared.”  
  
“You can’t be serious?” snorted Mycaelis.  
  
“I’m not sure, Mycaelis. Most of what we know is simply based on rumours or liars looking for a story to tell. If there is one thing that is certain, it is that there is always an element of truth to stories and legends of any kind. I want you to know this. Even to those that your mother told you.”  
  
“Our mother?” Vagus queried. “What do you mean? What was wrong with the stories she told us?”

The air once again grew tense as Marvin’s head sunk mournfully. Marvin felt a sickness in his stomach. He was about to rip the world of these two boys apart. No. It had already been ripped apart by whatever it was that took their mother and father. He would put things right for them, for both of them. This was their new world. The guild would give them purpose, he would give them guidance and, from that, life itself would grant them the identity they so sought.  
  
Yet still in his heart of hearts, he could not bring himself to dash everything they had been told. Perhaps it was the youthful explorer that still lurked within him. He wanted Elysium to be real. Perhaps, like the Undercoft, there was an element of truth to it, something that would someday become apparent for them both. Until that day, he would do all he could for these two lost brothers.   
  
“Alright. I was wrong,” he began, “you two are not Abnormals. Neither of you are.” A hopeful look sprang into both the boys eyes and made the following words even harder to speak. “But neither are you commoners and sadly, neither are you Laconians.”  
  
Mycaelis was the first to object as Marvin expected. “Bullshit. I’m every bit the Laconian that my father was. He was-”  
  
“A liar,” overrode Marvin. “As was your…mother. The story of Elysium she told you. That both of them told you. I’m sorry boys. There is no such thing as a Laconian or a place called Elysium.”  
  
“I’m with Mycaelis on this,” snapped Vagus, “what bullshit is this? How do you know there are no Laconians?”  
  
“Because Daedalus knows what you truly are and why your parents said what they said.”  
  
“And what was that exactly?” demanded Vagus,  
  
"Yea!" snapped Mycaelis, "What would that old fart know about Laconians?"   
  
“Walk with me,” Marvin then said to them after a brief pause. And so they continued on their journey home.  
  
It took Marvin a moment, but he eventually plucked up the strength to disgorge the whole truth. He told them everything. The Abnormals, their tenacity for keeping their blood pure, that their mother was one of them and that their father was nothing more than a freak of nature that managed to win her heart and convince her to forsake her clan. He told them that Elysium and the Laconians were but a story to cover her shame and her disloyalty. And finally he induced into them the revelation that the boys were no more than half breeds of a dying race.  
  
As he spoke he watched with a heavy heart as Mycaelis and Vagus' denial gave way to anger which, in turn, slumped into a state of depression with the occasional burst of denial. By the end of it, Vagus refused to walk any further. He slumped on the ground, sitting and frantically trying to grasp at any facts he could find to dispel Marvin’s words. Mycaelis, not surprisingly, was always up for a fight; even when one with words was involved.  
  
“But our parents were here for a reason,” barked Mycaelis. “They were looking for something. Vagus said so. We heard them talking about it.”  
  
“And did they ever tell you about it? Did they ever explain any of it to you? What they were doing in that Jungle?”  
  
Mycaelis’ objections faltered. “N-no. They didn’t.”  
  
“Of course not. No one goes willingly into Prisimatic Jungle, Mycaelis. The only ones who venture into that jungle are those looking for a place to hide from the world or to disappear from it entirely. It is an evil place to us Oat folk. A place where teams from the guild go missing constantly. How you two boys survived in it all this time was a nothing short of a miracle.”  
  
“We survived because Mum and Dad protected us!” objected Mycaelis, again. “There were those things. They came at us. They killed our parents.”  
  
“Outlaws and crazed individuals hiding in the jungle, no doubt,” explained Marvin. “Likely hiding from the law and took it upon themselves to raid your home for provisions.”  
  
Mycaelis didn’t speak a word as his world came crumbling down around him. A barely contained fury was held behind his eyes. His entire life had been a lie. He soon fell into a brooding silence the likes of which Vagus could only recall on the night their father met his end.  
  
Vagus remained silent the entire argument, silently moping. He wasn’t sure how to feel about the truths that Marvin had revealed to them. Vagus was free from having to live up to being a Laconian, yet now he felt more lost than he ever had been. Despite this new found loss, it hurt to know how much his mother had lied to him. Did she ever truly love him? Why would she fill his head with these lies?  
  
The exit to the forest was ahead. The sun had now risen to its peak for the day and light now blazed down through the thinner canopy of the outer forest. The village was ahead and the group could see its inhabitants going about their daily activities. The village was a small place, a small circular town built around a central communal fountain. Houses that oddly resembled the heads of various Pokémon served as the town’s structures. The most dominating structure of the town was treehouse that lay nestled in a great oak that overshadowed the town. A spiralling ramp around the tree’s trunk led up to the treehouse that served as Oat’s Prospectors guild.  
  
Marvin sighed and sat on a nearby stone. His old knees cracking in protest. He had been walking and standing all day. He sat with the two boys for a moment. There was scarcely a sound. The distant sound of villagers going about their daily business could be heard as could the odd sob or two from Vagus. Marvin spoke once more, looking out of the forest towards Oat Village.  
  
“The pain you feel now is but a transience. It will pass. What people say you are doesn’t matter. You are who you choose to be. The things that happened with you and your parents are part of that other life. This is your new life. It is your chance to be who you want to be.”  
  
He sighed. He knew his words could be of little comfort to them. How could they be? He had just informed them that everything they had been raised to believe was a lie. He rose to his legs once more, wobbling slightly.  
  
“I’ll give you two a moment. I’ll be over there by the fountain when you are ready,” with that he walked off towards the village.  
  
“Marvin…”  
  
The Flotzel turned around to find Vagus now standing on his own two feet. Looking at him with a pair of teary green eyes. “Abnormals eyes are different to those of commoners. They’re bright blue. They glow.”  
  
“They do indeed, Vagus.”  
  
“Mum didn’t have blue glowing eyes. Her eyes were green. Like mine. H-how could she have been an Abnormal? Marvin, what if Daedalus is wrong?”  
  
Marvin simply shook his head. The self-sketch of Divina he had seen in her journal was colourless. The colour of her eyes were never truly known to him until now. He cursed himself for not being more prudent in his conversation with Daedalus, for giving into his anger and his frustration. Now, he was too far into it all. He couldn’t afford to go back on what he said.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. He didn’t know. All he knew was that these boys now needed a future.  
  
“Vagus…Mycaelis…I can’t give you all the answers. In time I am sure you will find those all for yourself. But what I can give you is a future. Come with me.” He then turned and continued onwards towards the village. Behind him, both brothers exchanged glances with one another before rushing forward after Marvin.


	8. Prescience

Zach the Machamp didn’t know which sight before him appeared more peculiar, the corpse of a Greninja or the message the corpse once carried in his bloodied satchel. The poor fellow had been found on outskirts of Prismatic Jungle just yesterday with a clean hole through his chest by an outgoing Prospecting team. To Zach’s astonishment they reported that he was still alive and may have run for many miles through the cursed jungle bearing this wound.  
  
There were no candles lit in the treehouse of Oat’s Prospector’s Guild today, the room was dimly lit. Only the thin yellow rays of the mid-day sun were allowed to seep through the blinds and shutters of the tree house’s windows. The unfortunate Greninja was brought to Oat village a first light after healers unceremoniously declared him dead and reported his death to the guild. At the request of Carlos Cinccino, the guild’s master, he was dumped on the desk in office treehouse and left to be gawked at.  
  
“He must be foreign then?” wheezed the aged Guildmaster.  
  
“I suppose so,” rumbled Zach, “I have never seen Greninja in Oat.”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“Why am I here, Carlos?” Zach sighed, annoyed that he had been torn away from his mate early in the morning. Julia had long since produced an egg, and it had only just hatched yesterday, bringing him a beautiful daughter into the world. The prospect of fatherhood heightened Zach’s spirits and it pained him to be away from his beloved family for even a moment.  
  
“Because I need you, leader of the best team I have, for this mission,” responded Carlos, a glimmer of wide eyed youthfulness glittering in his eyes. “A rescue mission! The message this poor fellow was carrying was just that. A call for help!”  
  
“We’re a prospector’s guild, Carlos, leave the heroics for the hotshots down in Alamomla city. We hunt for evolution stones and minerals, not folk in distress. Forward this message to a proper rescue guild and be done with this poor sod.”  
  
“Ooh, Zach, my dear, Zach,” Carlos sighed, clearly disappointed in Zach’s attitude. “In your younger days you were so full of adventure. Especially when you trained under Marvin. Always hassling him to take you into the deepest caverns and darkest caves.” Carlos chuckled. “Have the burdens of fatherhood come to you so soon?”  
  
“Leave my kid out of this, please. Look as I said…”  
  
“Think of the glory it would bring our guild!” boomed Carlos, his whitened eyes glimmering. “The last time we received a rescue mission I could still see straight, ho ho!”  
  
Zach muttered, “Yeah…and still had most of your brains before you bloody went senile…”  
  
A door of the treehouse resounded with a loud knock.  
  
“Ah, finally!” Carlos’ grin widened and turned to the door. “Yes! Come in! Crass, my dear boy, is that you?”  
  
A chubby Toxicroak lumbered through the door, slamming it shut as soon as he crossed the threshold. “Greetings, my Guildmaster,” he regarded Carlos with a bow. He then turned to Zach. “Oh…hello, Zach. Still with us, I see?”  
  
“Hello to you too, Crass,” Zach’s eyes narrowed when he looked upon the slime ball that had just entered the room. “Still gaining weight, I see. Must be hard shuffling papers behind a desk all day.”  
  
“It is an honour and a privilege to do be our Guildmaster’s scribe in the wake of his failing eyesight,” Crass coyly replied. “Work as hard as I have in the field and maybe I may make you my scribe someday.”  
  
“Marvin has been offered the next position of Guildmaster, not you,” snarled Zach.

Crassius’ ambition and sudden success in the guild had drawn large volumes of suspicion throughout the guild’s teams, especially from Marvin and his late mate, Elia. Zach still remembered the day that Crass had stumbled back under the heavy burden of a sack full of evolution stones and the corpses of his team mates left abandoned in Prismatic Jungle. Their loss was something that Crass was quick to blame on outlaws but was always coy when questioned about the source of the stones.  
  
“Oh indeed, indeed. But has Marvin since accepted the offer of Guildmaster?” Crass grinned. “After that…unfortunate incident with his family all that time ago, I doubt the old fellow is mentally fit enough to run the local bar much less a fine guild such as this.”  
  
Zach’s temper flared upon hearing Crass snide comments about his former mentor. He stepped towards the bloated Toxicroak. “You fat piece of shit… I’ll put you through the window.”  
  
“Oh enough, both of you.” Carlos stepped between both Crass and Zach. “Zach! Find that message for Crass. Let us tell him of our finding this morning.”  
  
“Ah, yes. So this is the Greninja I was hearing about!” Crass approached the corpse and looked it over. “Such an interesting Pokemon are they not? It’s a shame that we-”

Crass’ gob gapped open wide, putting a stop to his speech. His eyes ran down the left arm of the Greninja. Upon it was bound a __white__ armband with a distinctive lambda symbol.  
  
Zach eyed Crass curiously. “Well by all means continue, Crass. Is there something you’d like to share with your ‘honourable’ Guildmaster?” his voice drooled with spiteful sarcasm.  
  
Zach heard nothing from Crass, but listening closely he heard the Toxicroak’s lips betray a whispered phrase.  
“A white one?” hissed Crass under his breath as he looked at the armband. “It’s supposed to be red? Black?”  
  
“What do you mean?” challenged Zach. “Speak up!”  
  
“Oh…n-not at all.” Crass stuttered loudly, a hint of sweat trickling down his fat cheek. “I m-mean it’s an interesting symbol is not? Yes…quite so.”  
  
“He was found with this,” said Carlos presenting Crass with a bloodied roll of parchment.  
  
The message that Crass beheld was barely legible and was hastily written by what appeared to be a very unrefined hand.  
  
 _To the Guild of Oat,_  
  
 _Excuse the brevity of this letter, as we are in great haste._  
  
 _I beseech you in a time of extreme need. An evil beyond your imagining lurks within the Prismatic Jungle of Oat. In its custody it holds a child captive: A Riolu named Leon. I implore you that you aid our servant, Pliny Greninja, in our mission to rescue him and any further requests and objectives that he may have. He will explain all._  
  
 _The rewards for your guild shall be glory beyond reason and our gratitude eternal._  
  
 _Prepare well and expect extreme danger. Send your best and send many of them. Safeguard Leon at all costs. Succeed where we failed._  
  
 _Signed,_  
 _Commander Artemis Chestnaught_  
 _Legion III, Laconia _  
  
__“The…fuck?” Crass looked to Zach perplexed who promptly responded with a shrug.  
  
“Glory eternal! What a reward!” exclaimed Crass joyously? “What a joy, what a chance we have to restore this guild to its glory. In rescuing a child from an evil beyond all imagining!”  
  
“That so?” sneered Zach, “And just how well does glory eternal pay now days? We have teams that need funding.”  
  
“I…I must agree with Zach,” conceded Crass. “This job offers us nothing and most of the information we need is held by someone who’s…well… dead right in front of us.”  
  
“Carlos…” sighed Zach. He felt bad for the old Guildmaster. So enraptured was he in the days of his past that he failed to see the reality of a functioning guild. “Please….you have to see reason here. We know nothing about this job with no assurance of a reward, the guild is struggling enough as it is.”  
  
“Indeed,” agreed Crass, a glimmer of ill intent in his eye. “Give me this letter. I shall…see to it. Perhaps it may be better in the hands of the guild in Alamomola bay.  
  
“No!” snapped Carlos. A burst of anger taking him. “Shame on you both! I took both of you into this guild and I thought you were better than this!” He turned to Zach, “you especially! Did Marvin not teach you anything? Why else do you think I called you here, Zach? You’re a father. What if it was your child? What if it were you that sent this letter only to have it tossed between indecisive guilds concerned with profits and obligations to greedy teams.”  
  
Zach sighed, in a way he was ashamed of himself. “Carlos…”  
  
“I bet if I handed this job to Marvin he’d take it in an instant!” snapped Carlos, “That Floaztel would have done anything to save his own children, why can’t you do the same?”  
  
“Leave Marvin alone.”  
  
“I won’t! I don’t care what you think! I am sending a team to save Leon. Because out there he is someone’s child, someone’s son, and I don’t care how ambiguous or ominous or stupid you may think this letter is, I am not going to sit with my fingers up my arse while a child potentially suffers!”  
  
Silence fell upon the room. Crass was shifting very uneasily on the spot and Zach was left blown away that the old guild master still had enough energy to berate him.  
  
“So…” said Carlos calmly panting and wheezing, “Are you going to accept this job or shall I involve Marvin?”  
  
“You’ll be sending him to his death if you do, Carlos. He can’t handle that jungle anymore. Especially if what this Artemis tells us is true.”  
  
“Then I take it that you will accept the job for Team Sabre? You will all be compensated, I assure you.” Carlos snatched the letter from Crass and shoved it in Zach’s face.  
  
Zach sighed. “Very well…” he slowly took the letter from Carlos’ hand and shoved it into his satchel. “I will do what I can, but Marvin stays out of this. If he has to hear about it, it’ll be from me.”  
  
“Your excellence,” whimpered Crass, “I must say this is most unwise. We should-”  
  
“Enough, Crass. Don’t you have paperwork to tend to?” Carlos was still fuming from his outburst.  
  
“Oh…of course. As soon as this corpse is removed from the desk.”  
  
“Wait….” Zach strode over to the corpse of Pliny the Greninja and removed his armband. He stuffed it into his satchel. “I’ll keep this in case we find his masters. Meanwhile, I’ll take him to the Cubones west of town. They’ll give him a decent burial.”  
  
“A cheap one, too,” remarked Crass. “Good idea, save the guild some coin,”  
  
“Yeah...great.” With those words, Zach covered the corpse in a thick burial shroud and carried it out of the room.

* * *

It was when he securing the covered corpse on the back of a Bouffalant that Zach heard a familiar voice.  
  
“Ho there, Zach! Grown soft in the muscles?”  
  
Zach turned around and was immediately met with a mixture of both joy and apprehension. Before him stood his old time mentor, Marvin; well-aged by time and rugged by the ordeals that came with it. At the aged Buizel’s sides stood two children, a Totodile and a Charmander.  
  
“M-marvin,” Zach was not one to lose his composure but felt it slip for a moment ever so brief. “You’re back! Was starting to think you’d never come into town again.”  
  
The two offered each other a quick embrace, Marvin’s shorter arms hardly finding purchase around the hulk that was Zach’s muscular frame.  
  
Marvin offered Zach a smile, a weak one, but a smile none the less. It had been years since Zach had last seen one from him. Something had brought a recent joyful purpose to his life and Zach could tell.

“I’m here on business with the guild,” Marvin was direct but not impolite. “Is Carlos in at the moment?”  
  
“Of course he is,” replied Zach cynically. “Where else would the old codger be? Out in the field with the teams?”  
  
Zach paused for a moment. “Look, you’re not thinking of getting back into it are you?” Despite his efforts, he could not keep a tone of concern from his voice.  
  
Marvin chuckled. “Oh, old me running around forgotten caverns and forests teeming with outlaws? I certainly wish. No, no, I am here on behalf of these two boys.” He placed his arms around both Mycaelis and Vagus. “Two half breeds, Abnormals, they show great potential, gonna get them enlisted.”  
  
Zach let out a nervous cough. He looked Mycaelis and Vagus over. “Abnormals? Marvin, you know how folk feel about having Abnormals in the guild, Crass especially. Won’t even let a pure breed step foot in the office.”  
  
“Fuck that cunt!” snapped Marvin.  
  
Zach laughed. “Careful, ya old coot. Language around the little ones.”  
  
“Who is this __cunt__ , exactly?” asked Mycaelis, taking a clear delight in spitting out latter part of the sentence.  
  
“You’ll learn in time, Mycaelis,” assured Marvin patting his shoulder. “Just make sure to give him a jab to the ribs when he steps out of line.”  
  
Zach laughed again, but his laugh was cut short when he noticed the armband on Mycaelis’ arm. Could it be? A small shiver travelled down his spine. It was an exact match to armband that the corpse behind him once wore. “Marvin…where did you find these boys?”  
  
At this point the corpse burdened Bouffalant was growing impatient. “Oi! Zach! Do I need to start charging a latency fee as well? This thing is starting to smell.”  
  
“Alright, alright,” snapped Zach, “get going, I’ll catch up.”  
  
The Bouffalant slowly turned about and trotted off in the direction of the town’s burial site. Zach turned towards Marvin once again. “Look I gotta go, urgent. Got a rescue mission coming up for the team and I. We’re leaving soon, but I hope to talk about some stuff before we set off, if you’re still in town.”  
  
“Is that so? A rescue mission? Ah, lad. I am proud of ya, you know that?”  
  
“Uhh…thanks,” Zach offered an awkward smile, “It’s in Pristmatic Jungle.”  
  
A brief look of horror appeared in Marvin’s eyes, but it was quickly hidden. “Oh…I see. O-of course,” said Marvin, suddenly beaming brightly, “we should catch up sometime soon. Best of luck!”  
  
Zach them turned and walked off in pursuit of the Bouffalant. Perhaps he should have mentioned the armbands to Marvin, said something, anything. No matter, he would discuss this all with his old mentor upon his return. Perhaps the old Buizel would have advice to offer for the upcoming mission.  
  
Little did Zach realise that Marvin’s thoughts had turned to that very advice now. With the stories Marvin had heard from Mycaelis and Vagus recently, he would seldom advise anyone enter that accursed jungle. But Marvin knew Zach and his Team Sabre well, had trained them since they were Mycaelis and Vagus’ age into the renowned team they stood as today. If anyone could handle that jungle, it was them.  
  
“Now,” Marvin turned to both Mycaelis and Vagus. “I need you two to wait here. I must go now to discuss your future with Carlos. I’ll come fetch you should he wish to speak with you.”  
  
“Great,” snarled Mycaelis. “First waiting outside a tent now a bloody treehouse.”  
  
“Shut it, Mycaelis. Just wait here and…try not to obliterate anything.” With that, Marvin turned his back and strode up the ramp to the treehouse.  
  
“Obliterate?” Mycaelis scratched his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Means don’t destroy anything.” Informed Vagus with a slight grin.  
  
“Oh, like how he just destroyed everything we’ve ever known?” Mycaelis kicked at a mound of gravel.  
  
“He’s trying to help us. Maybe he’s right. We should move on.”  
  
“And forget everything Dad taught us?”  
  
“What good to dad teach us anyway?”  
  
Vagus took in his surroundings. The bustling of Oat village was something he had never seen before in his life. Merchants and shop keepers peddled their goods, the masses of Guild teams wandered in and out of town taking a moment to refresh themselves by the town’s fountain.  
  
“Look around you, Mycaelis. I never knew so many people could occupy one space without wanting to kill each other. There’s no war here. No need for Laconians. Everything Mum and Dad taught us…I’m not sure if any of it matters anymore.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” A look of concern suddenly found itself on to Mycaelis face. He was staring at something behind Vagus. “You may want to turn around.”  
  
Behind Vagus stood the Guild’s notice board. Job and service requests were posted there by villagers for the guild’s teams to tend to. Amongst them there was one that caught Vagus’ eye that also made a chill run down his spine.  
  
It was an old job request, the parchment was yellow with age. “WANTED,” it read, “FOR THE CALLOUS MURDER OF ELIA FLOATZEL AND HER CHILDREN!”   
  
Beneath the heading was a portrait that featured the unmistakable features of Randhir the Absol.


	9. Maleficence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is currently the last of the chapters that were written. I hope to finish this story up in the next chapter or so. I currently have no ETA on the next chapter but hopefully some time in the next few months. I would like to thank my followers, both new and old, for reading this far.

Mycaelis and Vagus felt guilty of a crime of their own when the smile on Marvin’s face faded. Meeting him in the town square where he was happily picking out a team kit for both siblings. Mycaelis was the first to speak up while Vagus’ courage faltered and rendered him silent.  
  
“We know what Randhir did to your Elia and your children,” Mycaelis began.  
  
The words were enough to bring Marvin low and soon he his shoulder’s drooped in despair.  
  
“And I take it you have informed Carlos?” Marvin grimaced. “They know where Randhir is?”  
  
“Yes,” Mycaelis’ reply was short and held a hint of disdain. _ _  
  
__It was at this point that Vagus anticipated Marvin to fly into a rage and berate them both. Maybe it was the fact that they stood in a public place, but Marvin simply sighed and slouched his shoulders. Tears welled within the aged Floatzel’s eyes for a moment. “Oh…you boys. If only you know what you’ve done.”  
  
“What you should have done years ago,” snarled Mycaelis. “Your friend’s a murderer, get it into your skull.”  
  
“W-what Mycaelis means to say is,” Vagus stammered into the conversation, trying to lessen the hammer blows that were Mycaelis’ words, “…is that Carlos wants a word back at the guild.”  
  
“Of course he does,” sighed Marvin. “No doubt he has ordered Randhir’s arrest.”  
  
There was a bustle of activity near the guild as Crass plodded around barking orders to team leaders. Vagus was taken aback by the sight. For a simple arrest of a crippled Absol, Crass was mustering a large number of teams.  
  
Vagus turned back to Marvin who looked at both of the boys with sullen eyes. It had only been a few days since he found them in the storm but yet it felt like he had known them for some time. “I planned on explaining everything to you soon. Perhaps I should have done so before having you meet with the guild.”  
  
“It’s still not too late,” assured Vagus as he turned to lead the way to the guild. Maycaelis and Marvin followed him.   
  
“Ah, Vagus,” Marvin sighed, his energy now sapped by despair. “I certainly hope you are right.”

  
* * * _ _  
  
_It was the dawn of a new day when a Floatzel in his prime stepped into the morning sunlight. He took in the day and all of its glory, smiling and breathing deep the crisp air brought by a gentle breeze that caressed the waters of Oat Lake. The skies were clear with scarcely and cloud and a pair of Pidoves flew by offering the morning’s greeting as they passed._  
  
 _Marvin then turned to look inside his hovel that sat perched between two great trees near Oat Lake. His small home was a bustle of activity. The children had just awoken and their mother laboured, preparing bowls of berries to state their morning hunger. Once they were prepared they sat and ate quietly if not quickly, eager to embark on another day of young adventures._  
  
 _“Marvin,” Elia Floazel, his beloved mate look up at him with a smile. “Are you sure you don’t want more? Randhir isn’t expected by for some time yet.”_  
  
 _“I’m fine, darl.” Marvin stood close to her and put an arm around her. “He’s always early and I’d rather get on with it today. Sooner we leave the better.”_

_“I thought the guild had given our team today off. Can’t we just enjoy it? The kids have been wanted to go for a dive with you for a while.”_   
  
_“Yeah, dad!” Miles interjected through a mouth full of food. His brother, Caleb, at least had the courtesy to keep his mouth closed and rapidly nod his head in agreement. “It’s been ages! And aunty Narda says there’s treasure at the bottom of the lake!”_   
  
_“She still filling your heads with that tripe?” Marvin laughed. The Lanturn often babysat his children when he and Elia joined Randhir on a mission. She was, however, indisposed today. No doubt attending a gossip party with her underwater friends._   
  
_“Marvin,” Elia gave him a nudge._   
  
_“Alright, alright,” Marvin relented and addressed his two sons. “Look, uncle Randhir and I have something to take care of this morning. A friend of Randhir’s gotten herself stuck in the bog north of the lake. We’re gonna help her out and I’ll be back by noon.”_   
  
_“We’ll go for our dive? Will we find the treasure?”_   
  
_“I dunno about treasure, but we’ll see what we come across. But I need you two to stay here and help your mother, okay?”_   
  
_“Sure, dad!” both the young Buizel’s responded in unison._   
  
_“Marvin! Ya there, pal?” A voice could be heard outside._   
  
_Through the doorway, a strong limbed Absol in the prime of his life plodded through the doorway. He was an extraordinary sight, but his most striking feature, one that either encouraged curiosity or instilled fear in the townsfolk of Oat village were his glowing pair of pale blue eyes. To most he was simply an Abnormal, a breed of freaks native to Oat who now were relegated to the fringes of society, but to Marvin he was a dear friend._   
  
_“Randhir!” Greeted Marvin, turning back to Elia for a moment. “See, told you. Anyway we better move quickly. This daft Altaria isn’t going to free herself.”_   
  
_Randhir nodded his head politely two Elia and her children. “Morning, all. Sorry I gotta take dad away for a bit on our day off. He’ll be back soon enough.”_   
  
_“Just bring him back soon, Randhir,” Elia said with a smile, “And without a broken limb, please.”_   
  
_“Oh, c’mon. That incident with that Graveler was a one off.”_   
  
_Marvin then hugged his mate close and nuzzled her cheek. “Be back soon. Love you.” He then turned to his children and bid them farewell. “Alright, boys. See you later.”_   
  
_With that he turned his back and sprinted out the door with Randhir at his side._   
  
_They both jogged to their destination, Randhir slowing himself down significantly so Marvin could keep up. Randhir was the fastest Absol that Marvin had ever known and he often found it humbling that his friend would slow himself down just to keep pace with him. Yet he could tell that for a moment, something seemed to trouble his friend._   
  
_“What’s got your tail in a knot?” Marvin asked, mildly concerned._   
  
_“My tail can’t get caught in a knot,” replied Randhir plainly._   
  
_“Oh, you know what I mean. What’s wrong?”_   
  
_“Nothing. It’s just…you have a beautiful thing going back there. I’m sorry I had to take you away from it today.”_   
  
_“Don’t mention it. Look, you’ll find a mate eventually. Nice lovely Abnormal that will bare you strong and loving kids too.”_   
  
_“To what end? So they can be born into a world that hates them? So they have to live in forests and hills because the ‘invaders’ have made us strangers in our own home?”_   
  
_“The world we have is made by the quarrels of the past. The way I see it, we have a chance of forging a brighter future with our children. Miles and Caleb…they love you as child would love an uncle. You know that?”_   
  
_“I know. But it is so much to burden a child with.”_   
  
_“Children grow. And when they do, the world grows with them. It can grow together or it can grow apart. I would prefer the former, what say you?”_   
  
_“Of course I’d prefer the former. But it’s not like we can expect this change to occur in a single generation.”_   
  
_“Maybe not. But still, we need to make a start.”_   
  
_Randhir sighed. “I just…I just dream of taking my children to the lake here. Having them play with others from Oat. I’ll be happy knowing that.”_   
  
_“You and me both.” Marvin smiled and slapped his friend on the back. “Now, let’s pick up the pace. How this fool of an Altaria managed to get stuck in a bog I will have to see.”_

_* * *_

  
_“What do you mean you tried mating with a Milotic?” Marvin could barely voice his question over the loud cackle of Randhir’s laughter behind him._   
  
_The unfortunate Altaria was snagged by the roots of a nearby willow and could not free herself. A one night stand that had gone so very wrong._   
  
_“Look!” grumbled the Altaria, “I shouldn’t have to explain myself any further. Can you get me out of here or- DAMMIT RANDHIR WOULD YOU SHUT UP?!”_   
  
_The Absol was still laughing and had to lean against the trunk of the willow to support himself. He breathed deeply and took a moment to compose himself. “Okay…okay I’m good.” He shook the tears of laughter from his eyes._   
  
_Marvin assessed the foremost root and wondered if he could lift it. He gave it several goes but it failed to move._   
  
_“You know, if you let me Razor Wind it before you would be free by now?” said Randhir._   
  
_“No!” shrilled the Altaria. “I’ve already said no. You’ll hit me!”_   
  
_“Not helping, Randhir,” Marvin sighed. He attempted to slash the root, but his small claws failed to have much impact. Randhir then tried the same but failed as well._   
  
_“Look, maybe we should have brought Elia?” said Marvin._   
  
_“Perhaps you’re right,” agreed Randhir, “The kids should be fine on their own for a bit?”_   
  
_“Yeah, they should be. You better run and get her. You’ll be quicker than me.”_   
  
_Randhir sighed. “Alright, on it.”_   
  
_A gust of wind prevailed upon Marvin as Randhir left, dashing like lightning across the night sky._

_* * *_   
  


_For Randhir the journey was a short one. He had run as fast as he could. He wouldn’t have admitted it to Marvin but the lengthy sprint had taxed him somewhat. But what would tax the Absol more than anything he had ever endured in his life was the sight that greeted him upon the return to Marvin’s hut. The shouts and screams had reached him and compelled him forwards at a rapid pace and the sight he saw compelled a surge of fear and utter hatred to jolt from within him._   
  
_The door of the hut had been torn open with enormous strength. Around the hut stood about half a dozen Pokémon. Black kerchiefs or armbands hung around their scrawny necks or bulging biceps. Beyond them was Elia screaming, a scream then then suddenly became silent, reduced to pained moans of anguish._   
  
_It was then that Randhir sensed something. At first it came as a familiar chill down his spine. A ‘gift known only to Abnormals’ his father once told him. A gift to see those that had passed to the void and left traces of themselves behind. Randhir had mastered this gift like all Abnormals and could shut the voices and visons out at will, but these voices were familiar to him and turned the blood in his veins to ice._   
  
_They were the voices of Miles…and Caleb. Whimpering, crying and sniffling…helpless lost…and gone from the world they once loved and knew. Gone…gone…because of him because their father was not there for them._   
  
_A scream of horror, of fury and anguish escaped Randhir so loud it ground shook with an unnatural energy. Gone...gone….gone…yet still the voices of the children lingered…gone…gone. Summoning his hate, Randhir pushed the voices out of his mind and rushed forward, screaming with tears falling from his eyes. He could still save their mother._   
  
_He charged towards the hut. His brilliant blue eyes flashed as a wave of Razor Winds erupted from his horn. He didn’t know who these Pokémon were and he didn’t care to know. All he knew was what they had done and that he would be their end._   
  
_And so their end came when a flurry of Razor Winds struck them, slaughtering several of them where they stood. The remainder then charged at Randhir. The Absol darted left and right, swift and fast they were no match for him. He destroyed them when they reached him, cutting them open or slashing them with his claws._   
  
_He then made it to the hut and the sight only enraged him further. Elia…her body, beaten and battered and bruised, had been ravaged. Her eyes had been also put out by her sick assailants. How long these villainous degenerates had been with her was a thought Randhir could not bear. Before he could call out to her, Elia took matters into her own hands._   
  
_With her children now dead on the floor and with escape unknowingly just meters away from her, she cast herself on the blade of a Scyther and resigned herself to her fate. Her name…the name of one of his best friends choked in the back of Randhir’s throat. He could only watch in anguish and despair as her body fell from the Scyther’s blade and next to the corpses of her beloved children._   
  
_But this was not all that Randhir saw in the hut that day. Aside from the overturned table and chairs and destroyed furniture. Randhir beheld the master of this destruction: He towered above it, a malevolent and brutish colossus, an Aggron that Randhir, Marvin and all teams of the guild knew well._   
  
_“Slade!” Randhir bellowed. He rushed forward in a rage and attempted to tackle to Aggron, but he held firm. He grasped Randhir by the neck._   
  
_“Ah! Marvin’s Abnormal buddy.” With a vicious swing of his arm, Slade tossed Randhir out the door of the hut where he tumbled end over end until he eventually stopped himself. He rose to all fours and snarled at Slade as he emerged from the hut._   
  
_The Aggron strode forth confident and proud of his strength. He regarded his dead gang members with a sickening degree of indifference. He looked at Randhir. “I always hear you Abnormal freaks are good in a scrape. Let’s have it, c’mon!”_   
  
_Half a dozen more of Slade’s minions emerged from the hut, following their leader and grinning eagerly to see him in action._   
  
_Slade charged forward, but Randhir sidestepped and set the Aggron reeling with Slash. The attack barely scraped his armour, but had enough force behind it to make him stumble. Randhir back flipped and unleashed a Razor Blade that Slade effortlessly tanked with a laugh. “We’re both freaks here, Abnormal. You were just born with the wrong eye colour.”_   
  
_Randhir landed and dashed circles around Slade, the lumbering Aggron couldn’t lay a hand on him. Randhir attacked wherever he saw an opening, wearing his opponent down little by little. Soon, the smiles of Slade’s minions had turned to looks of concern as their boss failed to land any hits and his opponent had become thin air._   
  
_Randhir was panting by the time Slade’s constitution had failed him. The Aggron fell onto his back, his armour dented with small punctures. With a snarl, Randhir pounced ready to cave in his chest and deal the finishing blow. So enraged and consumed by his desire to slaughter Slade however, he neglected to check on the Aggron’s minions behind him._   
  
_One of them, a Sawk, was not content to sit aside honourably and let this duel take place. He grabbed Randhir by his mane and tossed him off of Slade. Aided by his minion, Slade reached out and grabbed Randhir’s hind leg crushing it in his iron fist._   
  
_A cry of anguish erupted from Randhir as Slade got to his feet and proceeded to kick, punch and throw Randhir around like a worthless play doll. He did not relent until the Absol was a blooded and beaten wreck, lying at his feet._   
  
_“Finish him boss!” cried out the Scyther._   
  
_“Fuck off!” bellowed Slade to his gang. He held out a hand to stop them from moving closer. He then looked down at Randhir who was left moaning in anguish. The pain of loss and pain of his broken body…the fear the fear of what would come next._   
  
_“I got an idea for you, Absol. A story actually. Let me tell you and my gang. It goes like this: You see, there once was a happy little family living by Oat Lake. When one day…a vicious Abnormal came. The family thought the Abnormal came as a friend but really, like most of his kind, he was nothing more than a predator bent on destroying the good people of Oat. He killed the children while their father was out and oh…the things he did to his mate.”_   
  
_Tears were pouring from Randhir’s eyes by this point. He wanted to die. He wanted to die right there and then. To be taken from this world as Elia and her children had been taken. He couldn’t live with this, not with this guilt or with this false slander._   
  
_Slade continued. “Just so happens that a group of concerned residents were around and heard the poor lady’s screams, but upon arriving…there was nothing they could do. The Abnormal tore through them, killing several before escaping.”_   
  
_Slade’s gang chuckled. “You’re clever, boss. That’s a right good story.”_   
  
_“I think I missed my calling as a storyteller, don’t ya think fellas?” Slade grinned. He then continued to speak to Randhir. “That’s what you’re going to do now, little Abnormal. You’re going to escape. I would say run, but I think your running days are done. And when you escape….folk will be so determined in catching you…so consumed by the outrage caused by your kind here…that they’ll never question this story.”_   
  
_“Let’s go fellas!” cried out the Sycther. “You heard the boss’s story, let’s spread the word.”_   
  
_And with that, the gang dissipated, walking over the corpses of their former comrades and removing their kerchiefs and armbands. If they were once members of a gang, none could tell now. Yet still Slade lingered._   
  
_“Marvin…” Randhir spluttered the name through his pain. “He knows I would never do this. You’re finished Slade.”_   
  
_Slade laughed. “Stupid Abnormal,” he rumbled. “What difference does it make what one person knows while everyone else believes something different? Marvin’s voice will be drowned out amongst the hundreds that cry for your end.”_   
  
_Slade then rose to his full height. “Goodbye, Abnormal. I hope you can get some distance from this place. We wouldn’t want the chase to end too soon.”_   
  
_Slade then lumbered off after his gang, leaving Randhir broken and crippled. Slowly the Absol tried to rise but his body screamed out in pain. He kept going, limping and slowly moving away from the hut. He had to get to Marvin. Blood oozed from his wounds as he tried to move. The wind that Randhir enjoyed running through his mane was gone now. Gone forever. He continued as far as he could, before he fell back to the ground and closed his eyes._

  
_* * *_   
  


_It wasn’t much longer until Marvin found him. Lying, with wounds oozing blood from his body. “Randhir! What happened?” He looked up out to his hut and called for Elia. He was too far away from the hut to see what had occurred._  
  
 _Fear had overcome Marvin as he shook his friend awake. A low pressure Watergun to Randhir’s face rejuvenated him somewhat. Enough to look up at Marvin and then look away out of shame._  
  
 _“Marvin…” Randhir’s voice was raspy as tears fell from his eyes. “I’m so sorry…”_  
  
 _“What do you mean? Who did this to you?”_  
  
 _“Slade…it was Slade and his gang. They came. I don’t know why. I tried to stop them.”_  
  
 _“Stop them?” Panic was very quickly creeping into voice._  
  
 _“Elia…and the children…I’m sorry…I couldn’t get to them in time.”_  
  
 _“No…noo…” A panic stricken Marvin sprinted from his friend’s side towards the hut. Randhir clenched his eyes shut and waited for the screams._  
  
 _What followed was a scream that surpassed Randhir’s from before. It was not a scream driven by anger or outrage, but the scream of a father, of a husband and friend. Of a man who had lost everything. He screamed for this lost children, he screamed and wailed for his lost mate, he howled and moaned in anguish as the future he dreamed of lay in pools of blood. It was the scream of a man who was dying, becoming a shadow of his former self._  
  
 _Within Randhir’s core he felt his heart break for his friends. Marvin and Elia, their children too; the only family he ever knew. He had lost them both this day and in losing them, so did he lose himself. Having rested his injuries, he got to his paws and limped away. To his home, deep and dark in the woods he went. With his own kind. In time Marvin would find him, and in time he would forgive. But Randhir would never forgive himself for the remainder of his days._  
 __  
__   
  
* * *  
 _ _  
__The sun was setting as Marvin finished his story. The orange light of the setting sun seeped through the treehouse’s West facing windows as Vagus stood with tears in his eyes. He turned to Mycaelis who simply stood staring blankly into space. His usually fierce look seemed pensive as his mind processed the story that Marvin had told them. He spoke not a word, unlike Vagus who was beside himself with grief.  
  
“What have we done?” Vagus cried. “Marvin, I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Would you shut up!” snapped Mycaelis, regarding Vagus with a fierce look. He turned to Marvin who was sat in an armchair opposite Carlos. The elderly Cinccino sat silently as Marvin told his story out of a reverent respect.  
  
“Marvin. When Randhir is brought back, we can tell everyone. We’ll find this Slade and beat the truth of him of we have to! Randhir’s name will be cleared.”  
  
At this Marvin simply sighed and sat forward in his armchair, brooding. “If it were that simple I would have done it years ago.”  
  
“Not to mention Slade as not been sighted in years,” coughed Carlos, ending his long held silence.  
  
“But we can-”  
  
“You don’t get it do you?” snapped Vagus grabbing Mycaelis by the shoulder’s and shaking him as hard as his Laconian strength would permit him. “Abnormal’s are treated like shit! The whole town thinks Randhir and the rest of his kind are monsters! Like we did. Their minds are already made up. We’ve just as well as killed him!”  
  
Mycaelis shoved him away. “What I don’t get, Vagus, is why they would do that.”  
  
“Because," snapped Marvin, standing from his chair, his eyes suddenly filled with anger. “People have a good knack for inventing monsters and monstrosities. It makes them seem far less monstrous themselves! When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, fight, when they murder children before their mother’s eyes or butcher the last remaining Abnormal and cry ‘justice.’ People like to think that the creatures hiding under their beds and in their closets are more monstrous than they are. They feel better. They find it easier to live. The truth is that monsters hide not in shadows or our imaginations, but within mirrors and our own reflections.”  
  
He then turned to Carlos, a look of complete fury in his eyes, “it’s a pity some of us are too blind to see it!”  
  
The words seemed to cut deep into the guildmaster. He may have not been able to see the stare that Marvin had given him, but he certainly felt it. He winced and shuffled uneasily.  
  
“Crass!” Carlos boomed, summoning the Toxicroak.  
  
Yet Crass did not respond. Instead a young Nuzleaf came sprinting from a back room. “You called, Guilmaster?” he stuttered.  
  
“Who in the blazes are you? I asked for Crass.”  
  
“I am Crass’ assistant, Guildmaster. He is currently indisposed.”  
  
“Stuffing that fat face of his, no doubt! No matter. I have an urgent request!”  
  
“Of course, Guildmaster.”  
  
“Find me a team, send them into Creeping Forest. Have them revoke the arrest for Randhir Absol. I’ll provide you with the-”  
  
“I’m sorry, Guildmaster, but that isn’t possible.”  
  
“And why not?”  
  
“All of our teams are currently on deployment.”  
  
“On deployment? Where?”  
  
“To undertake the arrest of Randhir, Guildmaster.”  
  
“And Crass gave the order? Why would that many teams would be needed to arrest one person?”  
  
“Because he hasn’t gone to arrest Randhir!” snapped Marvin. “He’s gone to pick a fight and massacre the whole tribe!” 


End file.
